Things That Are Bothering You, Got You All Hibbeldy-Jibbeldy, or just downright pissed, RIGHT NOW!

[otc]

Redwoods? If I see you in my backyard i'ma sic my dog on you

I'm about to drive 4-5 hours north of here so I don't think I'll be running into you

 

[edinatlanta]

McDonald's breakfast was acceptable, but I was really looking forward to my torta.

Oh well, sitting at SFO now waiting for my wife's flight to land, then we are off to the redwoods!

But pissing me off is that the Amex lounge doesn't let in arriving passengers... Need a departing boarding pass.

I can't believe how badly you screwed up yalls flights.

 

[otc]

Blame the airlines that keep cancelling and rescheduling. They've changed my damn itinerary 4 times.

And now I'm stuck taking a redeye on the way home too. They cancelled the afternoon flights and I'm not waking up early enough to drive 5 hours and catch a morning flight.

It's a ****** redeye because it's only 4 hours long. You land in Chicago at like 5AM tired as ****.

 

[patrick_b]

So what are you supposed to do, haggle with them?

If anything seemed out of the ordinary my wife would call and in every case, they discounted the amount due by a large margin, sometimes 50%. We weren't even asking for a discount, just looking for clarification in most cases. In almost all instances, the insurance company would notice an error and tell her not to pay and that they would resubmit.

Note these were for hospital stays or outpatient procedures. Our regular MD appointments for us and the kids are typically straight forward.

I pretty much always wait for the final notice, if not the first collections notice. That has definitely saved us substantial money over the years - an entire hospitalization was rejected and had to be resubmitted. That was a $10,000 tab that turned into a few hundred bucks.

That exactly what she does now. I started to worry that we were still seeing bills from my 2019 stay but there were dozens of errors along the way. Initial notices were in the $10K range out of pocket. It's cost us probably a quarter of that at most after the resubmissions.

If you aren't diligent, you end up getting hosed for thousands. How many people pay that first bill? I certainly don't have the patience to deal with insurance but my wife clearly has a gift.

 

[Bhowie]

McDonald's breakfast was acceptable, but I was really looking forward to my torta.

Oh well, sitting at SFO now waiting for my wife's flight to land, then we are off to the redwoods!

But pissing me off is that the Amex lounge doesn't let in arriving passengers... Need a departing boarding pass.

Get in the Smith river at Jedediah Smith park. The water is so gorgeous.

 

[Lizard23]

My son was born at 28 weeks (totally fine now). My wife had a placental abruption and went to a different hospital than planned since it was an emergency.

Long story short, NICU care for over 2 months plus the birth was billed at roughly 2M dollars.

Insurance denied the entire thing 3 times because they said it wasnt an emergency and we didnt go to the correct hospital.

We submitted tons of paperwork with signed testimonials from doctors and staff. No dice. Insurance claimed it couldnt be an emergency because my wife wasnt admitted through the ER (hospital policy for pregnant women was to bring them right to maternity/neonatal ward and be admitted there, so technically the ER didnt ever admit her).

Final letter from insurance 6 months later was that this was declined yet again and since now past 180 days we essentially would need to take them to court or pay ourselves.

In a panic I got a hold of the person who chooses the insurance provider options for my company. She said not to worry and would figure it out. 20 minutes later she called back and said it was all settled.

The next morning i was fedexed a box of checks made out to me for the full 2M or so. I wrote all of them over to the hospital. I didnt even pay a deductible.

Done. Easy peasy.

 

[otc]

Get in the Smith river at Jedediah Smith park. The water is so gorgeous.

CA is so damn big. That's almost 3 hours from the Baxter Environmental Campground we're going to.

Friends are bringing tubes and stuff to float some other river that they enjoy though.

 

[Piobaire]

My Contacts professor once told us there are only three truly immoral businesses in America- gun manufacturers, tobacco companies, and insurance companies. It seemed a like bit of a joke at the time, but the older I get, the more I think he was serious. And right.

Insurance should be highly moral but the US business aspect of it isn't. As we all know insurance for individuals is to guard against events that would be catastrophic relative to income. I find that a highly valuable facet of society. What it has turned into in the US, aided by the legal system, government intervention, regulatory capture, and 'Murican Exceptionalism, is a toxic nightmare of perverse incentives and moral hazards.

 

[Bhowie]

CA is so damn big. That's almost 3 hours from the Baxter Environmental Campground we're going to.

Friends are bringing tubes and stuff to float some other river that they enjoy though.

you ain’t be far from Arcatia. They’ve got a neat little central square with a bunch of interesting bars all around it. Pretty cool scene. That’s where I met the 6’1 blonde bulk weed broker. If you see her hiking around tell her I said Hi.

 

[Van Veen]

It's complicated. I mean, most of the time you're not paying the healthcare provider per se, you're paying what your insurance tells you to pay. United Healthcare, which is the worst, automatically denies about 20% of all claims just because it knows a certain amount won't get appealed. When your claim is denied then the provider goes after the customer. No one wants to do that as private pay is the shittiest collection rate in anyone's A/R. That's just one aspect.

It's really just a cluster **** of a system and rates are certainly predicated upon a certain amount of uncompensated care and/or reduced billings. This is covered by various means including having a charge master that's way out of whack with reality and the fact market forces are minimally invasive at best.

There's a reason I keep pushing for a Bismarck/Bismarck hybrid system.

Yeah and that's the problem. It is (or should be) trivial for a cash customer to get the insurance rate if they ask (just like me getting the "contractor rate" aka the real price at Benjamin Moore). But there are plenty of suckers that don't know this. This book is sadly needed.

Reminds me of the huge fight I had with my dentist over billing. Had to go through 3 people. They had my network wrong in the system. Whatever network that they had me set to charged higher rates than mine, so they balance billed me. (IIRC "illegal balance billing" is what finally got them to really look into it and realize it was just an oopsie.)

 

[Van Veen]

Who checks in advance of a 911 ambulance call to determine if it's in network?

My wife cut her finger once when I was out of town for work. She called me and asked what to do. I told her to just go to the hospital ~5 minutes away from us. Had no idea whether it was in network. Well, it wasn't. 6 stitches at an out-of-network ER turned out to be more expensive than an in-network ER visit, surgery, and treatment to repair a shattered elbow.

 

[ter1413]

My wife cut her finger once when I was out of town for work. She called me and asked what to do. I told her to just go to the hospital ~5 minutes away from us. Had no idea whether it was in network. Well, it wasn't. 6 stitches at an out-of-network ER turned out to be more expensive than an in-network ER visit, surgery, and treatment to repair a shattered elbow.

That alone would have made me hibbeldy!

 

[Omega Male]

Periodic reminder that we are all unspeakable plebs.

The secret economics of a VIP party

There’s an invisible system behind every £100,000 bar tab and its currency is pretty women

www.economist.com

 

[PhilKenSebben]

My son was born at 28 weeks (totally fine now). My wife had a placental abruption and went to a different hospital than planned since it was an emergency.

Long story short, NICU care for over 2 months plus the birth was billed at roughly 2M dollars.

Insurance denied the entire thing 3 times because they said it wasnt an emergency and we didnt go to the correct hospital.

We submitted tons of paperwork with signed testimonials from doctors and staff. No dice. Insurance claimed it couldnt be an emergency because my wife wasnt admitted through the ER (hospital policy for pregnant women was to bring them right to maternity/neonatal ward and be admitted there, so technically the ER didnt ever admit her).

Final letter from insurance 6 months later was that this was declined yet again and since now past 180 days we essentially would need to take them to court or pay ourselves.

In a panic I got a hold of the person who chooses the insurance provider options for my company. She said not to worry and would figure it out. 20 minutes later she called back and said it was all settled.

The next morning i was fedexed a box of checks made out to me for the full 2M or so. I wrote all of them over to the hospital. I didnt even pay a deductible.

Done. Easy peasy.

It has taken me 15 minutes to write this out because my post capitalism erection keeps taking blood from my brain. **** me this is amazing.

 

[PhilKenSebben]

Periodic reminder that we are all unspeakable plebs.

The secret economics of a VIP party

There’s an invisible system behind every £100,000 bar tab and its currency is pretty women

www.economist.com

Another reminder that I am a plebe, the fact I can only read the first paragraph.


Also, good job trying to distract front he fact you are the millionaire. Good job man. Your cover totally worked!!