A few years ago, I was fresh out of college and working at large university with a very good teaching hospital. I was making $30k/year, but had amazing Cadillac

A few years ago, I was fresh out of college and working at large university with a very good teaching hospital. I was making $30k/year, but had amazing Cadillac health insurance. I started developing asthma (unbeknownst to me. It was caused by a very gradual onset allergy, and I had never had asthma before), wasn't able to walk up a short flight of stairs on my way to work one day, and, instead of turning right to go to the office, I decided to turn left to go to the urgent care center attached to the school. I wasn't waiting more than 5 minutes (for a walk in!), was seen by two doctors and at least one nurse, including a pulmonary specialist, got a chest x-ray, a breathing test, lots of stethoscope exams, and diagnosed (correctly!) with asthma. I don't remember how long I was seen for, but it was a very long time, for what most doctors would probably consider to be a fairly straightforward diagnosis. (Oh! And it was all free -- they didn't even bother to mail me a statement afterwards. I gave them a $20 bill for the co-pay, $5 for the prescription and that was the end of it) Around the same time, a friend of mine, in a different school, going to a not great school clinic with his school's official insurance plan, was in a similar situation to yours, where a collapsed lung was misdiagnosed as "you're just tired, get more sleep," without an exam. (Granted, as an engineering major, he did need to get more sleep, but still!) As you might imagine, there were some pretty hefty hospital bills later on when his condition deteriorated... Anyway, your situation sounds terrible, and I wouldn't be surprised if the collapsed lung misdiagnosis was fairly common. "Collapsed lung" just seems like one of those things that's really easy to misdiagnose (in some presentations, at least) as a number of other things, unless you're good with a stethoscope, and/or have access to medical imaging equipment (and the will to use it!). Ugh. It's so absurd to me how fantastic and thorough my treatment was at one school (I was on the same insurance plan the students were), and how badly the screwed up a similar situation at a school just 10 miles away -- both with nearly equal tuition rates and health insurance plan costs.