Bills, Bills, Bills

Oh, bills.

I got off work a little early and Pa is watching Shane, so I came home and got productive. I jury-rigged a fence repair so Brogan can't escape, unloaded the dishwasher and I've been paying off assorted bill since.

Have I mentioned I hate medical bills?

I hate how you pay a copay up front and then you have to sit and wait for your doctor and insurance company to cook up a bill that you may or may not see for the next couple of months. It's like gambling with bills. I wonder what today's visit will cost me (eventually)!

We had one bill in particular that decided to haunt us for almost two years: Shane's delivery.  I'm not making this up. Somehow, our insurance provider changed their internal system less than a month after Shane was born. We were issued new cards and numbers which confused my insurance company and the hospital. A year after Shane was born, we received a bill in the mail for over $400. My wife spent hours on the phone with both ends and it ended with our insurance telling us not to pay it.

Then, they called again. More hours were spent on the phone.

Months passed and a year and a half after the delivery, the bill showed up in our mailbox again. We called insurance again and after more hours on the phone, they told us they were going to have to pay it this time.

Huh?  We complained, and they then had someone go back and listen to all of the recorded conversations to see if they accidentally promised to pay anything. A manager eventually came on the phone to sympathize and say "Sorry!"

I'm not going to go into a full rant mode, but we paid the bill and I'm still sour on the whole insurance process. Supposedly, we had to pay something extra because Carrie's room in the maternity ward was labeled as 'private'....not that there were any multiple occupancy rooms, but what do I know? What further boggled my mind were the prices. The bill was $18k, the 'allowed amount' for insurance to pay was $6k. Boy, I'd hate to be uninsured with a baby on the way and go to a hospital. Somehow the insurance company gets a $12k write off, and if you're not with them you're written off. Ouch!

I'm not going to pretend I have a solution for the whole process, but things need to get simplified somewhere along the way. I'm sure many doctors wouldn't mind either since they get stiffed on the bills sometimes, too.

Anyway, this was a good way to kill some time on hold about the trash bill. I hate when there's not an online bill pay system. I figured I'd save the stamps this time, but I think the stamps are cheaper than my time the next time around.