I’m not sure whether discretionary yellow fever vaccines are just this expensive in the United States, if I just experienced a bit of a markup, or if I was totally taken for a ride.
I made a yellow fever vaccine appointment with Passport Health
For quite some time I’ve been meaning to get the yellow fever vaccine. I believe I got the vaccine many years ago (when I was a kid), but I don’t have proof of it at this point.
Long story short, I want to review more African airlines, and many African countries require proof of yellow fever vaccination (and other countries require proof of yellow fever vaccination if arriving from a country where that’s a risk).
I have a potential trip in a few weeks where I’m considering a routing that might require yellow fever vaccination, so several days ago I made an appointment to finally get that done.
I searched online for somewhere near me where I could get a yellow fever vaccination, and Passport Health came up. This is a travel medicine company that claims to have 270+ locations around the United States. I briefly searched online about the company and didn’t find any red flags. Furthermore, the location I was going to mostly received very good reviews.
I booked the appointment over the New Year holiday, so their offices were closed at the time, but making an appointment online was easy. The website didn’t list the cost for any vaccines. My assumption was that the pricing would be in line with what other travel clinics charge, given that the company is large and seems to get at least somewhat good reviews.
Anyway, I just had my vaccination appointment this afternoon, and I was shocked by the price…
How much my yellow fever vaccine appointment cost
I visited Passport Health this afternoon. It was located inside a big office building, and as I walked into Passport Health, I immediately asked myself “how does this place make money?” This Passport Health location had a huge office with a single nurse working.
Well, I think I know how they make money — my appointment cost me a total of $483. This includes a $99 “office visit” fee (I received a $10 discount for completing my health form online), and $394 for the actual vaccine. The “office visit” is required to get a vaccine, and included sharing important information, like not drinking tap water in Africa (okay, got it).
When I was told the price I was totally shocked. I had searched online, and I saw prices all over the place, but there was a general range:
- Obviously these vaccines are much cheaper in Africa, which is fair enough (since it’s an essential health concern in some countries, rather than being for discretionary travel), and many airports will administer them for under $50
- I see one website suggesting that the average cost of a yellow fever vaccine in the United States is $170, while the Florida Department of Health seems to charge $221.22 for the vaccine
- For private clinics, it does seem that the admin fee is a standard thing that’s charged in addition to the vaccine cost, though it looks like Passport Health seems to have some of the highest vaccine costs
So I did get totally screwed here, right? Like, is this just toward the upper limit of pricing for the vaccine, or does this fit in the “highway robbery” camp?
Let me 100% acknowledge that I should have done my research in advance. I share this experience not because I’m proud of having overpaid for a vaccine, but because I hope others will learn from it and not make a similar mistake.
I’m sure some people can at least appreciate how this happened. I made the appointment over the holidays because I had a moment to catch my breath and get a few things off my “to do” list. It has been a busy week (life always feels busy when you have an infant), and then this morning I looked at my calendar and said “oh, I have that appointment today.”
Then my appointment had a cancelation fee, so it’s not like I could walk out at that point. And for that matter, purely in terms of valuing my time, I didn’t want to waste a couple of hours going through the whole process again (between driving and being in the office).
To be fair, I was in and out in no time, and the nurse working at the office was very nice.
If I did overpay so much, my only question is whether I should leave an online review? After the appointment I got a message asking me to rate my experience, so… I feel like I should do that? First I just wanted to make sure that I’m not off base here, because I don’t want to be unfair, given how nice the nurse was.
Bottom line
On the plus side, I finally got around to getting the yellow fever vaccine, which opens up a lot of exciting Africa travel for me. Unfortunately it cost me nearly $500, which is (I think) outrageous. It seems that you’ll pay an absolute minimum of $200 for this in the United States, but between the $394 vaccine and the $89 “service,” I ended up paying a lot more.
So, just how outrageous was this yellow fever vaccine pricing?
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