Wednesday, November 12, 2008

They got me by the .....!!!!!!

You know your day is starting off badly when you go to the doctor and he says "stand on this stool and drop your pants." Then he says, "and drop the under wear too." I had already decided that if he said to drop anything else that I was going to tell him that it wouldn't drop any further. Then he proceeds to poke and prod with no concern for how badly I was hurting. He did the routine that he pokes and says "now cough hard." I wanted to respond by saying, "you stand on the stool and drop your pants and underwear, let me poke your with vigor and see if you can cough hard." I wanted to knock the shit out of him and ask how that was for hard.

I found out that I had a hernia that needed to be repaired and that when I had it done I was going to hurt like hell for two days. But the day gets worse. I have to go for pre-admission and lab work. It really gets bad now. I go through the routine of signing shit that I don't know what it is and giving this lady my insurance card. She then indigently says, "you know that you have a $1000 deductible", like "you dumb-ass, how can anyone have such a high deductible." the answer is because you charge so frigging much. Being the Henson that I am, I kept my mouth shut :). Then she said, and your insurance only pays 60% for out patient surgery, I asked if I could have it done in patient and she said that the procedure didn't justify in patient." So much for us NOT having socialized medicine. So I asked her how much the procedure would cost and she says, "I don't know but your maximum out of pocket expenses would be $3000, so they needed a check for $3000 up front." My response was-"ain't going to happen." I have spent the last two days trying to figure out what this procedure would cost. NO ONE CAN TELL ME!!!! I was told that they could only tell me AFTER the procedure was invoiced AFTER the surgery. Well, shit!!!! This would be like going to a restaurant and ordering without knowing how much it cost but expected to pay whatever the bill happened to be.

The frigging insurance company-Blue Cross Blue Shield cannot tell me what an out patient procedure will cost me. Their response was somewhere between $1000 and $3000. You pay us $3000 dollars and if it is less we'll refund your money. And the damn thing about it is I don't have a choice. I either pay it and quit hurting or don't pay it and hurt like hell. Excuse the pun, but it's like they have me by the b...., oops sorry but you get the picture, oops I hope you don't get the picture but maybe get the idea. No wonder so many people are pushing for universal health care.

But I still have my dignity...aw shit that hurts. Maybe not.

5 comments:

David Henson said...

Wow. That really sucks.

But at least the doctor didn't tell you to drop pants and stand on your stool. That could have been really bad. :)

India Henson said...

I think this is called privatized universal health care. It's only universal if you can afford it, though. Like this is what some want to do with social security. Privatize social security. You can get your social security check as soon as you jump through these hoops. But if you miss one hoop, well... you get the picture. So what happened to all that money you've been paying into health care all these years? CEO's?

Anonymous said...

The U.S. has the best health care system in the world...


that nobody can use.

I'm going to start saving now for my down payment on an iron lung. With my smoking habit and inflation, I would probably have to put about 10k down just to get the operation.

pops! said...

I'm just glad he didn't tell me to drop my pants and stand on my tool.

Anonymous said...

Arnica gel really helps a lot. That and Ibuprofen. Within a week it's all cleared up.