Remember about 3 months ago when I had to go to the hospital because I was hit by a car while riding my bike? Well, I'm STILL receiving payment notices, requests for information, and other annoyances from our insurance company.
We have a policy through our school which is a very low-cost insurance policy (which, as we all know, means that it is a very low-benefit insurance policy). I knew we didn't have great benefits, but I was a little caught off-guard by the rather large bill I received from the hospital today.
I had thought we were finished with the bills because we had already paid for the CT scans I had and for the doctor's fee. Little did I know that the whopper would be the charge from the hospital itself. And for what treatment, you ask?
They gave me three bags of IV saline and observed me for 5 hours. Cost to the patient--let's just say Jeffrey and I will be choosing our favorite child, and that one will get to go to college. The others will have to work off mommy's debt as janitors in the hospital.
The bill also showed that the insurance company needed to be contacted because they required more information to process the claim on this bill. I called. This is what happened:
(Series of number pushing on my part to reach a real person)
Clarence: Hello, this is Clarence, how can I help you?
Me: Hi, Clarence. I've just received a bill and it states that your company needs more information from me to process my claim. What exactly is it that you need?
Clarence: (Asks me various questions about things I already entered in with my keypad.)
Me: So...what information do you need?
Clarence: We need to know what insurance you had before this insurance.
Me: I had insurance with my mom and dad, but that was over a year ago...why do you need that?
Clarence: Oh, we're just trying to determine if the old insurance should pay because you had a pre-existing condition.
Me: I was riding my bike and got hit by a car. There was no pre-existing condition.
Clarence: Right, but we just need to know if there was one because if there was a pre-existing condition, the old insurance would need to pay.
Me: Clarence--how could there be a pre-existing condition? It was an accident. I got run over. No condition required.
Clarence: Yeah, that actually doesn't make sense.
I feel so reassured/insured.
President Obama, we need a little health care reform over here!
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I love reading your blog because I could hear you having that conversation with Clarence as I read it. The only people I hate worse than insurance people are Comcast. I have literally lost control with Comcast over the phone on more than one occasion. I'm sorry you'll have to pick your favorite child to go to college--we'll probably be doing the same thing seeing how it will cost $600,000 to put a child through college by the time ours reaches 18.
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