Totally whipped this evening: busy day.
The list, partly left over from yesterday:
• Post Office: Mail checks to subcontractor, vet
• Apple Store: What’s with the iPad?Pool Dude: figure out his pay…2 days off
• Call Mayo: $2,935????
• Landscape Dude: Install anti-puppy pool fencing
• Clean bedroom closet; get rid of old shoes
• Cope with classes
• And so on, and so forth…
Yeah. That’s twenty-nine hundred and thirty-five dollah that, says the Mayo, “You are personally responsible for…”
Yeah?
Since this little horror show began, I have called the Mayo’s billing department four times — make that five, counting today’s. Every time I call over there and ask for an estimate of how much I’m going to owe, after all is said and done. They sent me an itemized statement, just for the first surgery, totaling $13,000, but I was assured that Medicare and Medigap would cover virtually all of it except 15% of the surgeon’s fee.
Every time I call over there, I get a different story. Evidently, the truth is they simply do not know.
So today I call Billing and complain that I haven’t heard a straight answer since this started, that I can’t afford another three grand for the second surgery, and that if I have to pay for yet another repeat performance, the tab is going to come to around $10,000. She suggests I call Medicare and ask them what they cover. Then I could call my Medigap insurer and ask them what they cover. And I could go through the three-inch-deep pile of paper in my file drawer and compare the checks Medicare has issued with the charges it has approved.
To date, Medicare has approved every charge that I have been informed of: to my knowledge Medicare has rejected nothing. So why, pray tell, the $2,395 bill? And does she even vaguely grasp what is involved in trying to get through to a Medicare bureaucrat? Or in what is involved in trying to translate what such a creature utters into something comprehensible that applies to real life? Has she ever talked to an insurance company factotum?
Frustrated, I dropped it and, if not forgot it at last tried to forget it.
Ran around the city. Persuaded an Apple employee to unjam the iPad. Inspected Apple MacBook Airs as potential substitute for rather useless (for my purposes) iPad. After listening to the usual unending pitch, did a little Web research. Learned the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro may beat the 13-inch MacBook Air. Suspect 13 inches is going to be unnervingly small after all these years of 15 inches.
Fight traffic fight traffic fight traffic fight traffic drop off mail at USPS fight traffic fight traffic fight traffic
FLY IN THE DOOR FREAKING STARVED and the phone rings from the Mayo: nurse asking how I’m feeling. I’m about to explain exactly how I feel about being called by a nurse and told that my surgeon wants to see me right away but by the way she’s on vacation, out of town when the dogs go freaking BERSERK: Richard and underling here two hours ahead of schedule.
Fight crazy puppy fight crazy puppy fight crazy puppy see that Richard has brought black fencing not the off-white I asked for grab a bite to eat scarf down food try to calm crazy puppy look out and see Richard & his guy have moved the august and venerable potted ficus tree out from under the patio overhang and parked it in the scorching hot sun (108 degrees by then).
So outside, socialize with Richard and workdude socialize socialize get a frost cloth throw it over the ficus hope to god the thing isn’t fried do you KNOW how many years it’s taken to for that tree to reach its present stately size?
Make three mosquito traps, experimental. More about which later, if I live that long.
Shovel out closet. End up with large trash bag filled with worn shoes; set aside to schlep to Goodwill.
Answer student emails. Answer endless telephone calls.
Richard and underling finish building fence and gate. Arrange for Richard to build a replacement for decrepit back gate. Shovel Richard and underling out the door. Get mail as the men drive off into the distance.
Pick up envelopes from mailbox. One is from Medicare. Throw all the other envelopes into the recycling bin.
Open Medicare envelope. Find check: $1100.42.
Dayum!
Welp, it’s not good, but it’s sure better than a hit on the head. It cuts the amount the Mayo is trying to extract from $2935 to $1835. That’s a lot better than $2900 x 3 + x + y + z.
$1835 x 3 operations + ($280 doc fee not covered by Medicare x 3) = $6345
$2935 x 3 + ($280 x 3) = $9645
Not good at all. But it could be worse. $6350 is bad, but not quite as bad as almost 10 grand. And more funds may come forth from the Medigap insurer.
I do intend to ask if the Mayo will reduce or comp the cost of whatever Dr. P proposes to do next, whenever she drifts back into town. But unless the proposal is made by a lawyer, I kind of doubt that one will get very far.
Funny, I’m struck by the complexity of this whole Medicare…gap insurance…covered …uncovered costs mess. You for better or worse are “on the ball” and seem to be full of angst and questions about this crap. I go thru this with my folks who are in their 80’s, on a regular basis. And it has become evident to me that no one knows what the hell they’re doing. If I hear the term “coding issue” one more time…I think I’ll scream. Thanks for sharing your “trials and tribulations”, so as we laymen and women can learn something…..
It’s so obscenely complicated that even people with a lot of training and experience are challenged to figure it out.
Certainly with Social Security I found you could call three times trying to get an answer to a single question, talk with three people, and get three different answers. That specifically is why I do NOT want to waste my time getting on the phone to Medicare.
But when the Mayo sends me a bill saying, effectively, “this is the bottom line” and the bottom line for ONE surgery is almost $3000 and I’ve now had two surgeries and it’s beginning to look like there’s no end in sight, I get worried.
Honestly, it would be better to be dead than to have to go through this into your 80s.
No, it wouldn’t. I turn 80 this year. Life is always good, even tho complicated. I’ve learned to almost enjoy dealing with insurance kinds of stuff – pour a cup of coffee, put a smile in your voice, get the name of whomever (whoever?) you are talking to and WRITE IT DOWN, and persevere. Good Luck.
LOL! Ellie, that’s the best comment of 2014!! <3
Okay, so occasionally I have written down those hapless CSRs' names. But so far I haven't figured out what good it does. You can't ever get back in touch with the same person. Possibly if someone gave you outright wrong information AND you could prove it (to do so, you'd have to be recording every phone call), you to the person's higher-ups… But that would require that you could find who the manager is AND that you could get someone to connect you to the manager — usually they will not. If you insist, they'll just have a friend in the next cube answer the phone and pretend to be a manager.
And why should we have to spend what little remains of our lives in an endless phone-tree maze populated by the ignorant, the bored, the unhappy, and the unhelpful?
I worked at a hospital in Maine , before we moved to Minnesota. At that time there were at least 4 – count them FOUR different coding manuals. I was friends with the lady in charge of the medical records dept.
If the doctor’s staff write the description even slightly off, you are given an incorrect code for a procedure – thereby insuring that your fee schedule is wrong – why the codes never give you more money I have never figured out.
Good luck! We got bills from the hospital for months after my husband’s surgery. I am going to have to call Ellie for help because she obviously still has a functioning brain at 80, whereas mine has gone bye-bye at 65.
I would wait a long time before I paid the bill. We paid a bill we received–turned out it was erroneous. We made monthly calls to the accounting dept–each time, we were told that the check would be sent out at the end of the month. This went on for many years. No check EVER, even though each rep acknowledged that we were owed money.
So we simply stopped paying other bills we received. Maybe we evened out. The one we paid was huge. These office don’t know what they are doing. Bills are completely fictional.
Totally agree with frugal scholar. Don’t pay the bill until you are completely satisfied that is the amount you owe. They will have no incentive to work with you if you are paid up.
I got them to stand down off the bill for 60 days, so we’ll see how much money comes in from Medicare & Medigap by then.
If you don’t pay the bill, they put a lien on your house.
Oh, and they also can garnish your wages, Social Security, alimony, or welfare, whatever it is you’re using to live on.
Yah, I had that happen with the Mayo. They never did refund the overpayment. It’s now applied toward the current accumulation of bills.
Isn’t it grand – so many non-profit hospitals that go after people’s money.
I wonder if they also garnish welfare checks?