Greetings my lovelies! I’m writing to you from a little south of Hell right now. The heat combined with high humidity has me wondering when I moved into a sauna 🥵🥵. At least I’m not still in Vegas 😮💨.
On to today’s tale. Recently, I was lamenting the ridiculous amount my outpatient surgery was going to cost due to it being in a hospital vs a clinic. Well today I’m going to share some more of the absurdity of this whole mishigas (such a perfect word 😁).
Let’s start with the call I made to the billing department. I called to see if they would give me a reduced rate if I paid it all at once instead of them having to bill me regularly until I pay it off. Now I should have aborted the call when I realized I had reached a generic call center that they might not be helpful with my request. But no, I pressed on. I ask the question – can I get a reduced rate if I pay all at once. She says let me look at your bill. She then tells me that they have already given me a $2300 reduced rate?!? Mind you, I have the bill right in front of me and there is no mention of/no line item showing a $2300 reduction. There is however a $23000 payment FROM MY INSURANCE. So not a reduction a payment 🤦♀️. And I had to point that out to her 🤯. She then proceeds to ask me how I’d like to pay, before I had actually gotten an answer to my original question 🙄🙄. I realized some higher power was testing my resolve to always be nice to the call center workers because they have limited powers (usually). But the end result was that they only give discount for people without insurance and I almost asked how much that was but wisely decided against going down that rabbit hole. Then she asked again what method of payment would I like to use today. Now at no point had I stated I was making a payment and mustering up all of my resolve to not spew unkind words at the young woman, I informed her that I will make arrangements on my own to manage paying for my bill. So instead of paying in one or two large payments, I’m going to drag it out for about six months just to be petty. Also, I’m curious to see if after one or two months they’ll come back with a discount just to close it out. Maybe, maybe not but I’m not going to make it any easier for them. And I’ll be sending checks via snail mail just to add a petty cherry on top of this bowlful of pettiness I’ve now engaged in. A gals gotta do what a gal’s gotta do 🤷♀️.
Now the second piece of absurdity comes from the actual line items from the bill. Now some of it I could understand where the cost was coming from. But what caught my eye was a line item for recovery room time and it came to $3k 😱😱. FOR RECOVERY! Which means you pay to wake up from the surgery and the nursing staff keeps an eye on you while managing all the other patients in recover, and it’s not like it’s one on one attention. But if that wasn’t crazy enough, the line item for my Gynecologist was $900+. That means the most important person (in my opinion) was less expensive than waking up! SOMEONE MAKE IT MAKE SENSE. How does it cost more for me to wake-up than what the surgeon costs? I just shook my head in disbelief.
And now I’m not sure which scares me more, the outrageous cost or the fact the billing representative couldn’t even read my invoice correctly 😳😳.
Goddess help us all 🤪.
Peace ✌️
My Lemons My Lemonade 