I'm a little upset with the health insurance company lately. My doctor called to tell me that my health insurance identification number has changed and so he can't submit any insurance claims until he gets the new number.
Since the first I heard of this was from him, I can't call him with the new number. I simply don't have it. I asked BrilliantEditor if maybe he just forgot to tell me, but nope, no letter or call or email or sky writing for us. So that's just a complete mystery.
I'm also in a program that health insurance will often pay for. The general rule is that if the insurance is crappy, it won't pay for much of anything. In this case, my insurance is pretty good, but it won't pay for this. The crappy insurance, by the way, will pay.
I explained to the person in billing, who was very, very sweet and kind, that this was really irritating and disturbing. If I were to pay for the portion of the program I've already done, I'd owe $2,700. I was planning on zero dollars. Apparently, I'm not sick enough for them to deal with it.
Bastards.
How screwed up is it that there are so many convoluted rules that it's next to impossible to figure out what will be paid for and what won't be? I got a letter from the program indicating that insurance would pay for half. Looking in my plan book, it appeared that it would pay for all. I guess to be crafty, they just wanted to throw in one more percentage and cover the whole spectrum.
Bastards.
Oh, and I have a cold. It's getting nasty. I hope I don't have to go to see the doctor. I don't have an insurance ID number, they might not pay for it anyway, and I might have to rip out a lung before they acknowledge that I'm sick.
Bastards.
And if anyone is close friends with a senator or president or governor, can you please mention to him or her that a national health care plan would be a good idea? I'd like to further suggest that giving senior citizens a 25% discount on prescription medication is not a health care plan.
I know a woman (she's 25) who was hospitalized after an intentional overdose. She's now recovering from an eating disorder and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when she was in the hospital.
She's really trying her best, but she's not well by any means. She lost her job and can't work full time because the stress sends her back into the kind of cycle that sent her to the hospital in the first place. And the eating disorder gave her some serious intestinal problems. Her doctor wants her to go to the hospital. In the hospital she won't get dehydrated, she'll get pain medication, and they'll make sure she eats.
But when she lost her job, she lost her insurance. Her doctor is a generalist and she needs to see a specialist. Because she has no job, she has no insurance, and she has no money, so she can't see a specialist. And she can't afford the hospital.
Medicaid won't kick in because she's made too much money in the past year (at the job she lost).
Now I want to know how a 25% discount for senior citizens on prescription drugs is supposed to help this woman buy a ticket to the specialist, a stay in the hospital, and pay for the prescriptions she aready orders from Canada.
Bastards.
Posted by dotty at December 10, 2003 11:31 PM