My Apologies

Yesterday was a good day.  I found out that I am, pretty much, finished dealing with medical bills.  Bills I incurred SIX MONTHS AGO.  I should consider myself incredibly lucky because most places would have sent me to a collections agency for not paying them after 30 days (except, oh yeah, that happened too), but that didn't relieve the stress of having to call four separate billing agencies weekly (more often than not a few times a week) to keep them from turning me over to debt collectors and ruining my non-existent credit.

So this blog is supposed to be an explanation for my inability to be myself for the past half a year.  Besides the fact that I very literally almost died, lost my car, missed a lot of my paid-by-the-hour-no-vacation-or-sick-time job, was in extreme amounts of pain, had to buy another car, got dropped from my car insurance, and am now suffering post-traumatic stress disorder every time I'm in the passenger's seat (and am not even considering the driver's seat still), I have been totally stressing out about these bills.  I do have insurance, but they denied covering anything for months.  Thankfully I am also so far below the poverty line that the leftover bills from the hospital were covered by hospital charity, but I had no idea I was going to be awarded that until just yesterday.  Hurray!

I also thought this might be a good time to share with you all the cost of medical care in America.  Working in a doctor's office I understand why some things are charged the way they are, there's liability and massive overhead for healthcare, but HOLY FUCKING SHIT CHECK THIS OUT:

That is just page one.  Let me break this down for you.  Just to stay in the room for one night it was $1,605.  That's like 8 days in the Waldorf Astoria Orlando Hotel via Expedia.com.  Believe me, it wasn't that nice.  THERE WASN'T EVEN A MINI FRIDGE.  Not that I would have broke into that shit.  Can you imagine what peanuts would be?

Then they drew blood of course and ran all these tests.  But like, I don't exactly see the point.  ALL my scores were totally out of whack (I have access to the OhioHealth database at work so I looked my own results up) which you would have had to guess they were going to be all fucked up because I'd just been hit by a car.  And of course it had to be taken twice to make sure everything went back to normal.  Or something.  Because they obviously had no idea what normal was for me...

Page two is interesting because of the radiological stuff.  Here you can see the hospital getting its machines paid for tenfold!  Also, be sure to note that these fees are for the pictures alone--they do NOT cover the radiologist's charge for reading anything.  That bill will come later.  Or in my case not at all until some rando calls me and asks for my credit card info.  More on that later.

To this day I don't know the actual difference between physical and occupational therapy and I have apparently had both!  I guess two girls showing me how to use my crutches for about 10 minutes and having me go up a few stairs was the physical part and ultimately making me puke was occupational?  I did continue to vomit the rest of the day, and I was really good at it.  I mean, I would have hired me.

Now this page...this page burns my biscuits.  I don't know what all those charges are under the catheter, but oh my fuck it better not be for inserting it the THREE SEPARATE TIMES.  Those bitches should have paid me for that--no one should have three strangers fucking with their vagina for that long and not make some profit.  Also, "ER Level V."  Remember that.

$49.20 FOR A SODIUM CHLORIDE INJECTION?  FOR FUCKING SALT WATER?  FOR SHIT THEY GET IN BULK FOR LIKELY LESS THAN A DOLLAR A BAG?  SHIT THEY GET FOR FUCKING FREE WITH INFUSIBLE DRUGS?

Enoxaparin is the generic name for Lovenox which is essentially a blood thinner.  I had to self inject that stuff everyday for a month afterward so I wouldn't clot and DIE.  A month's supply of that stuff costs $500.00 at the pharmacy.  Yup.  That's a lot, but it's also only like $17.00 a shot.  As hefty as that is, it is significantly less than the $96.60 I was charged for them while I was at the hospital.  Also, rat poison is like $5 a box and it is PRETTY MUCH THE SAME THING.

AND IN WHAT FUCKING WORLD IS HYDROCODONE $3.75 PER PILL?

Remember ER Level V?  I knew you would.  Well what the hell is this almost $6000 trauma activation fee?

I'd also like to point out that I spoke with Dr. McGann once, he was a total asshole, and I was sent a separate $900 and something bill for his services separately.  My orthopedist who I followed up with was about another $1000 for two separate visits and some x-rays, a chunk of which I paid for out of pocket because, lucky me, my accident happened in December and my insurance rolled over in January so meeting my $5000 deductible (yeah, you read right--three zeros) stopped mattering when I had to go for a follow up in the new year.  Then I had a $1100 ambulance service fee.  Ambulances are run by separate companies, just so you know.  And the people who work in their billing departments will call you a liar when you're telling them the truth.  It's a fact.

And remember the radiologist's fees?  Well, I got a call from a collection agency asking me how I was going to pay this $43 bill.  I had no idea what he was talking about, and could barely understand him to boot, and had to practically beg him to find out where the bill was from.  Then I had to google the name and get a phone number, call it, be asked for my account number, explain that I don't know what it is because I never received a bill, be told they need an account number, tell them again I don't have access to it, but I did get a call from a collection agency, and finally give her my name which she used to pull me up just as easily as with an account number.  She tells me they billed the insurance company five times, denied all five times, then billed me, THE LETTER WAS RETURNED TO THEM BY THE POSTAL SERVICE AS UNDELIVERABLE (the USPS is pretty fucking sucky here at our apartment), and so they sent me to a collection's agency EVEN THOUGH THEY CLEARLY HAD MY PHONE NUMBER TO GIVE TO THE AGENCY AND COULD HAVE JUST CALLED ME.  When she told me the bill was for $39 I almost shit myself.  I told her if I had gotten a bill for that little bit I would have paid it with a smile on my face.  Eventually they straightened everything out and I paid it out of pocket even though insurance should have covered it, but that scared the shit out of me.

So hopefully this kind of explains why I have been in not the best mood for the last half a year.  Well, no, probably not, but maybe something got knocked funny in my head.  They never did a brain scan, after all, so we may never know.

I also want to be clear that a big part of showing you this was to make you all appalled at healthcare costs, not to be me just bitching about it because, while it sucked, I am not in debt now and I'm not having to pay off thousands of dollars like I know a lot of people get stuck with, so I am very thankful.  I also understand, like I said, the overhead at a hospital.  I understand doctors need to make $500 to look you over and do nothing for you.  I GET THAT.

I am most thankful, however, to be done with it.  And maybe now my chronic diarrhea will go away.  We'll see.  And if it doesn't you'll be sure to know!