So it seems that the billing departments of the various hospitals and doctor's offices we use are sexist. I know. Weird, right? Here's the skinny.
Dave and I are trying to use whatever disposable income we have right now (extra money in our savings and my royalty income) to pay off as many medical bills as possible. If we can clear most of them by the end of the year, we can claim them on our taxes which will be a huge-o help. Anyways. Talking to these people has been, um, interesting, to say the least.
Our pediatric cardiologist is with this massive children's practice attached to the Dell kiddo hospital in Austin so all the billing is, of course, done out of Dallas. Uh, okay. So I ring them up to see what we can do and the lady tells me she can't put us on a payment plan until we have no more insurance claims pending. Uh....what? I explain to her that my baby sees her pedi cardi every four weeks, more often if needed, so there are ALWAYS going to be insurance claims pending. She became very quiet and then told me to wait until I received our next statement to try again. What? Like our baby is the only baby in the entirety of that practice who sees the doc every month?
We had some radiology bills from Nyx's time in St. Jo's NICU. I called a few weeks ago and asked if we could pay it off in installments over the next three or four months. I was told no. Well, tough titty, lady. You can take my payments or stuff it.
Dave called last week because he felt bad that I was handling the financial nightmare that was our kiddo's $300,000 (actually a bit more than that) hospital stay. Guess what? This same woman was super quick to make a deal with him. What the crap? Same thing when he called TCH. They offered him half off of our surgeon's bill (a doozy, that one) and we jumped on it.
So what's the deal? Why were these folks so helpful to Dave? Is this yet another case of weiner privilege?
I guess it doesn't really matter. We're clearing the medical debt. We're broke as smoke but we're clearing that friggin' debt. Of course, we'll be right back where we started in, like, four weeks but whatever. I try not to think about how much this next trip to TCH will cost. Just the room and board for the kiddo's CVICU stay (doesn't count meds, doctors, surgeons, tests, or the three or four days she spent in the step down unit) cost us $120,000.
Yeah. Ouch.
Luckily, once our insurance company finally sorted itself out, things didn't look quite as bleak. I mean, we're still on the line for the out-of-pocket maximum which, I've discovered, is really high compared to most people. It works out to about a tenth of Dave's gross income or just about every penny I've ever earned from my writing. :( Yeah. Sad that, huh?
And now we get to start all over with a new company on the first. Yay!
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
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Ffar from the scale you have, of course, but I had a similar experience with Bryan Radiology. Before the procedure, I asked exactly what it would cost. They couldn't tell me. I got two bills (one for the machine and another for the human I never met), but they were for almost identical amounts, so I didn't know they weren't the same one. When I called to try to straighten it all out, the woman yelled at me. I asked her to stop and reminded her that *I* called *them*. I was trying to make it right, but needed better clarification. I think I ended up hanging up on her. A few days later, I called back and as luck would have it, had to talk to the same witch. She yelled again, "I told you on [blah blah date]..." because she was reading her notes from the call. Now this was a pair of ~$70 bills. I was only a tiny bit behind on the one and only then because I didn't realize there were two. I sent her $7 a month over 10 months....because if you make a regular good-faith effort they can't ding your credit. ha! And, I'll have to be dead before I'll ever use Bryan Radiology, again. There was NO cause for her behavior toward me.
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