Kyunghee Lee’s right hand hurts all the time.
She spent decades running a family dry cleaning store outside Cleveland after emigrating from South Korea 40 years ago. She still freelances as a seamstress, although work has slowed amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
While Lee likes to treat her arthritis with home remedies, each year the pain in the knuckles of her right middle finger and ring finger increases until they hurt too much to touch. So about once a year she goes to see a rheumatologist who administers a pain-relieving injection of a steroid in the joints of those fingers.
Her cost for each round of injections has been roughly $30 the last few years. And everything is easier and less painful for a bit after each steroid treatment.
So, in late summer she masked up and went in for her usual shots. She noticed her doctor’s office had moved up a floor in the medical building, but everything else seemed just the same as before — same injections, same doctor.
Then the bill came.
