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The woman in my avatar is Cristina Scabbia and the woman in my profile picture is Tarja Turunen
Sun flames and moons glow, timeless the tides will flow, what will I face, what will be mine, fortune and fate the other side...

Post of the week:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Inferno You just don't relate to my sense of humor. How about this. Gosh darn funny man living in a whale. doncha know that gawd could do that I betcha he could. wink wink.

I missed it somewhere, I must be blind....wonder how much treatment for THATS gonna cost

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The woman in my avatar is Cristina Scabbia and the woman in my profile picture is Tarja Turunen
Sun flames and moons glow, timeless the tides will flow, what will I face, what will be mine, fortune and fate the other side...

Post of the week:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Inferno You just don't relate to my sense of humor. How about this. Gosh darn funny man living in a whale. doncha know that gawd could do that I betcha he could. wink wink.

Yea after your post had no trouble finding them

But oddly when I did respond with a guess, it only had two pages ...but most likely it was me being blind and I just didnt notice the additional page numbers.

I DO need glasses, probably big THICK glasses.

How this hospital operates is they just send you a straight invoice with actual charges and then another line with "estimated insurance coverage." Insurance does not effect the totals on this bill. At the end it states, amount to be paid = $ 0.00. Then there is a note that indicates that this is not the amount that will necessarily be paid by insurance coverage if you have it. I don't know if that's unique to this hospital or whether they are required by law to provide it and allow the patient to review the charges before it gets submitted to insurance.

The insurance company will send me a statement indicating what they negotiated and paid and then I'll get a final invoice telling me what I still owe the hospital.

Thanks for your kind wishes and food really wasn't bad. Plus, nice nurses!

One other unusual occurence was I met the CEO of the hospital. He wandered into our room one morning when my roommate and I were having breakfast and chatting together. He asked us how the services were and gave us his card. He said he does it just to get a general impression of how people are feeling about the services of the hospital. He got to listen to my theory of how Doctors should treat patients like it is a pardnership in health instead of dictating and Doctors need to communicate better. He said that the way it should be. I told him I thought the nurse and other staff people were great at the hospital, never rude. Seemed like an OK guy, kinda reserved, only person I saw in a suit. This hospital has a reputation of trying to be innovative in services, but disappointing in profits. Hmmmmm? He might have been making sure that our food portions weren't too big.

Sunnyside and I pm'd back and forth on this bill and I decided to contact the hospital for a more detailed information

. I got a nice young lady on the phone and after asking a couple a questions, she asked if I wanted a whole copy of the bill. I got billed for a lot. There were five full pages of small printed items to try to figure out what cost so much-34 charges on each page.

Surprise number one- I had one baby aspirin. No charge.

Surprise number two-I take Pepcid for my stomach. At home I take a generic that is nonprescription. $6.40 for about a month and a half. At the hospital they gave me regular Pepcid, two a day for $8.70 a pop. Ouch!

Surprise number three-Lovenox, which isn't supposed to be so expensive (blood thinner) was $188.40 a pop and I had these shots twice a day.

Ultrasounds were about $1400-I had one. CT Scan was $2500 in total, there were some different charges. One of those.

Oxygen was $200 a day, I would have preferred the regular air for that price.

The lab tests were expensive because they intially did a ton of tests and repeated certain $150 tests. Had a couple of close to $500 tests done initially.

Its looks like once I got settled in, the routine bloodwork was low.

There is such a markup on RXs. Coumadin was about $5.40 a tablet, once a day. You can get a month worth of generic for $4.

Somewhere there is some heart tests although its hard to sort out lab tests from the heart tests. EKGs were only $165.80. Maybe they were on sale this week.

All I have to say is you would have to really know your testing to figure out some of this stuff. Not to mention the items are abbreviated.

Lots of small stuff. I find it all pretty interesting, but this is something I would prefer NOT to be an expert on.

So the U.S. Private system of health care isn't so bad after all!

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Not many people know this, but I'm really famous!

Yeah, a drop in the bucket. You got $22,000 just lying around of which you'd like to pay for this bill? Its not over. In another month they'll redo many of the expensive tests.

One day you in the pink and the next month somebody is giving you a bill plus you missed much work during this time. I've had three surprises the last year and an half. Bad luck on all with total "hospital" bills of slightly over $100K after not having to spend any time in hospitals for many years. If you can be nonchalant about these kind of charges, good for you.

The good thing is that I have insurance although you're still going to pay some out of pocket charges. It seems like its a little different each time depending who's all involved. I can tell you I would have paid a whole lot more out of pocket had I went with one of the medical accounts which is why I almost find that to be a form of gambling. However I am lucky to have insurance that will sorta pay.

You can not really be a good consumer when you get medical emergencies. Doctor says this is what you need to do, you're gonna do it. What, you want to worry about saving money when your life could be at stake?

You can put it on the tombstone: Here lies Ziggae. He was a hero to the insurance companies by insisting he not be given tests or procedures unless the costs were reasonable.