Friday, January 07, 2011

I Guess He Was Supposed to “Take it Like a Man”

Jeffrey had his surgery in November, and the bills are starting to arrive.  It’s amazing how many different things you can get charged for when you have surgery!

We already got and paid the bill for the Doctor.  Insurance paid their part, and we took care of the rest.   Then we got a bill from the hospital – for $12,000.  They hadn’t taken any insurance info from us on the day of the operation, so they billed us for the entire amount.  Once they got the insurance info, they submitted it and sent us a new bill.  The new bill reflects the discount because we have the insurance, but it doesn’t take off what the insurance is actually going to pay.  We’re still waiting on that.

Today, we got a bill from the anesthesiologist – for the full amount, no discount, no insurance payment – just a note at the bottom saying that our insurance had denied the charge.  Really?  They paid the doctor for the surgery, but they’re denying the cost of anesthesia?  I suppose he was just supposed to suck it up, be a man, and have that surgery with no anesthesia.

Well, we’ll get this all figured out eventually.  It’s just funny and a bit frustrating in the meantime.  We pay to have insurance; the least they can do is pay when they’re supposed to.

After paying gor the doctor, I think Jeffrey pretty much hit his deductible for the year, so I’m hoping the final tally won’t be too bad.

1 comment:

  1. My husband got cancer in 2009... that one hurt. Yeah, we hit the yearly stop loss... $5,000, plus a $500 deductible! Not exactly something easy to pay when together you only make $20,000 a year. We're still making payments, haha. And then to kick off 2010 we took him to the ER and even AFTER what insurance covered it was a $650 bill. Still making payments on that one too.

    So. I feel your pain. Haha.

    ReplyDelete

I love your comments! Keep them coming.