Medical Bills

Housekeeping, odds and ends.

Today, I received the bill from Pretty Hospital for the last go 'round of surgery: $48,092 and change.

In the same pile of mail was a personalized form letter (you know, they toss your first name into the text here and there for that *special* touch) -- from a former Chairman o'the Board to the same institution, suggesting that $420 would be an appropriate donation toward keeping Pretty Hospital more better.

The hospital bill will be paid by BCBS -- Bull Crap Bull Skeet of Tête-de-Hergé -- to whom I now pay $1300+ a month in premiums. I am exceedingly angry at the recent hike, coming as it does after another hike just 6 months ago. I *know* that I cost them lots of money. I also *know* they are trying to squeeze me out of my coverage.

I paid out all my deductible and out-of-pocket expenses by mid-February -- $5,000+.

Grrrrrr.

Also found in the pile of catalogs and grocery store ads? A bill from the Ecstatic Infectious Disease Group for $2185.11. I cannot explain exactly why, but yes, I am responsible for the full amount despite my excellent insurance coverage.

It surely is a fascinating game, the way the amounts charged receive odd payments here and there, way strange adjustments -- all to end up quivering with expectation in the balance column.

For instance, 08 January 2009 sees a charge of $1995 for VANCOMYCIN HCL 500MG, for which no payments were made, but a whopper of an adjustment is noted -- $1866.06, leaving moi with a line balance of $128.94. Now, THAT is an adjustment.

However, as I scan the dense Statement of Account, I note that, for other things, I am royally screwed: Elastomeric Infusion Devise "cost" $825 on, oh, let's pick... 15 January 2009, with a payment of $192.57 and an adjustment of $549.90, leaving this pauper with a balance of $82.53.

Hmmm -- but back on 01 January 2009, the charge for that self-same Elastomeric Infusion Device schtuff was $770, a charge toward which no payment was made, though there's an adjustment of $513.24, leaving this sucking hole of broke-ness with a balance of $256.76.

Strange and incomprehensible, these jumbled numbers. I do believe that that is the plan! Confound them with numbers and demands for payments. Ah... and there is no sign on the Statement of Account of the four payments I made while at the office, payments totalling over $1100.

Yesterday, I received a fairly chummy letter from Bull Crap Bull Skeet of Tête-de-Hergé, the verbiage of which seems to indicate that they've once again been caught with their paws in the cookie jar.

"As a result of Tête-de-Hergé Safety and Fire Commissioner Benevolent Guy's examination of reimbursement policies involving ambulance services (air and land),
Bull Crap Bull Skeet of Tête-de-Hergé has agreed to review and adjust certain ambulance claims.... " Yes, I am in the group of sickly poopheads who may be entitled to refunds of payments made to various ambulance providers (It is an odd and little known fact that in the villages around Marlinspike Hall, deep deep in the Tête-de-Hergé, 1.4 vehicles out of 3 are ambulances, or former ambulances.)

This is, of course, good news. Except that, as I read on, I am lost in the morrass of instructions about how to go about submitting a claim to get MY MONEY.

Someone somewhere has a sense of humor, though, because if I "have any questions about this letter or an Explanation of Benefits relating to an adjustment for an ambulance claim, please contact our dedicated Customer Service Unit." Ar! Ar! Ar!

Well, it is time to get hooked up to my little medicine balls of daptomycin. I've no idea how much it costs. What am I supposed to do? Decline the recommendations of one of the top Infectious Disease doctors in the region because I cannot spare the odd dollar? On the other hand, he is working in the dark -- assigning various antibiotics to a patient whose nefarious pathogens refuse to grow in the Pretty Hospital lab. I might get just as appropriate coverage by chowing down on moldy bread.

I hate money. Yes, even when I am in good straits, I hate money. It is nothing but a contractual construct, by means of which we condemn a good portion of the planet's human inhabitants to lives of drudgery and need.

Why not go click on the link for the Site Officiel du Parti Socialiste in the Tangent's List to your left? Yeah, that's right -- you've found a live one...

I will close with my favorite medical charge of the *day*: $4,344.00 for the Recovery Room. First off, they don't like it when I call it the "Recovery Room"; No, today it is known as the PACU -- post-anesthesia care unit, or something to that effect. More to the point, I was there for about an hour and a half. Unless they were doing heroic and expensive things while I was still fuzzy, they did precisely... nothing. Yes, they took vital signs and actually did hang a bag of vanco, but beyond that? Nothing. That's a whole lot of nothing.