Tuesday, January 23, 2007

More Medical Drama

So I got a message from my father this afternoon. He paid $500 of my medical bills but the collection agency continues to harass my parents with bills for the original amount. He called them, but they refuse to give him any information so he informed them that he wouldn’t pay another goddamn cent until the $500 paid was deducted from the bill.

These people are scum. I have a hard time deciding whom I dislike more: my former insurance company with a $3,000 deductible, the medical center that charges outrageous facilities fees, or the collection agency that almost literally oozes skeeze.

I can’t help feeling like I shouldn’t have gone to the emergency room. Granted it’s not like I had much of a choice but maybe if I had nursed the kidney infection for another month or two I would have ended up on dialysis, in need of a transplant, and quite firmly above the insurance deductible.

All this fills me with inarticulate rage.

4 comments:

edluv said...

i hear that transplants are all the rage amongst the kids these days.

Adam said...

Just think, last the night, the President said he was going to work hard at making health care affordable for more Americans. Not all Americans, but you could be in that more group. Cross fingers.

Monticore said...

That sucks. I mean it's not like you're a leech on society. You contribute the economy and society. but since your not wealthy, work for the gov. or are a dependant of the state(receive medi-cal, medi-car) this happens and now the true leechs of society are unleashed (bill collectors)

auritus said...

Actually, both my jobs since graduating college have been for the state =) First at a public university and now for the department of health services. Although I've never been put directly on a state payroll, my salary comes out of grants from the federal government.

But yeah, I think you really nailed by saying I contribute to the economy but I'm not wealthy... it's the same problem with student loans. Being too rich to qualify for a lot of aid but too poor easily pay for it yourself.

Anyway, to the extent I've made use of it my new insurance isn't so bad but I haven't had the need to visit an ER yet, which is where I think you get screwed the most. It strikes me as deeply fucked up that I made an appointment in January for a doctor's visit in April and that if I ended up in the ER, my insurance company would probably say "well you should have gone to see your primary care physician. $3000 deductible, neener neener, go fuck yourself." (This is a different insurance than the old one I had, the old one I had I actually went to a doctor in the network -who sucked- and still got billed a couple hundred in facilities fees or some shit.)

Um, I digress. But yes.