Right off the bat, let me say that I trust that everyone who reads this had a very relaxing and satisfying Christmas day with their loved ones. Several people have asked about Jen's condition and so I thought that I would take a minute and write a short update. She wrote a few days ago about the size of the kidney stones that were troubling her; while they are testing for other things, it was clear that these two moon rocks had to be dealt with because of other issues they were causing. So on Wednesday she reported to the North Davis Hospital to have a lithotripsy procedure done on the kidney that had the largest stone, and according to the doctor, the surgery was very successful. She spent all day and night on Wednesday in bed, and was able to move around in limited amounts on Christmas day. She was absolutely dibilitated by nausea, however, and the doctor or hospital had failed to prescribe any medication for it; therefore, I got to wake the doctor up at 6:00 a.m. on Christmas morning and have him call in a prescription, and then I got to go and fill the prescription. Luckily, he was very kind and understanding. It was clear that the call from his paging service had woken him up, and I had to chuckle when midway through our conversation, I heard the toilet flush. Funny!
The tough thing about all of this is the amount of money charged by the various entities involved in such a short procedure. I've had a couple of friends over the years who have been forced into bankruptcy because of medical bills associated with million dollar preemie babies, for example. But you wouldn't expect that something like this would break the bank.
A few years ago, Jen had a migraine that was so severe that I had to take her to the emergency room one night at midnight. We were there until about five thirty in the morning while they did a CT scan along with some other tests. The door of her room happened to open right next to the desk where patients that were ready to leave, processed their final paperwork and paid their co-payments. Like most people, my employer and I shared the cost of my monthly health premium which meant a few hundred dollars a month deducted from my payroll. In addition, my payroll tax deductions at the time were somewhere in the neighborhood of $400 a week. I remember being completely shocked as the night in the ER wore on that, not only was Jen the only patient in there that had bothered to put on shoes for their visit to the hospital (it was summer), but that every single person that left there in that five hour period whipped out their Medicaid card, paid their $6.00 co-pay, and skipped out the door. My tax dollars hard at work, I thought. When it was our turn to leave, I wrote a check for our co-pay in the amount of about $425.00, and spent the day feeling pretty screwed by the whole system. I mean, I wasn 't even headed out to the parking lot with a pack of smokes in my hand, like everyone else that night, and yet I felt like I was footing the bill for them.
Now that I'm "self-employed" there is no employer picking up 70 percent of my monthly premium. And like many small companies, its necessary for me to sign up for a high deductible plan so that I can keep the monthly premium slightly lower than the payment on a new Escalade. Jen already met her personal $1k deducible a few weeks ago when she had the MRI prior to the Lithotripsy, which means that for the the rest of the year, the insurance company picks up 80 percent of any other expenses on her, and we pay 20 percent. Pretty standard, right? So imagine my shock and horror to learn that our "20 percent" of this procedure was going to be $1,200.00, and that was just the hospital portion which does not include the doctor's billing or that of the anathesieologist. I'm sure that in the end, we'll get wacked for about $2k out of pocket. The doctor orginally wanted to schedule her in during the first week of January because he's going to the Sugar Bowl next week, but we talked him into doing it now because our deductible cycle would start over on Jan 1 and it would cost us an extra thousand bucks then. So there we were on Christmas eve morning, with Jen pondering whether or not she should just call it off and deal with the consequences due to the cost. And I said that I hope that if she ever found me on the floor clutching my chest in the throws of a heart attack that there wouldn't be a question if she should call 911 out of fear of the potential cost. The truth is, I don't know the economics of a hospital, and for all I know, they might even lose money providing me that service at that price. But I'll bet they don't. In fact, as we sat there in the admitting office on Wednesday morning, the girl talked to us about our co-pay and offered to knock off 25 percent on the spot if we pre-paid the entire thing. That was very telling. I mean, if they've got that much padding built into the cost, then help a brother out and reduce your fee right off the top. Wishful thinking, I know.
However, as with everything else that gets thrown at us, we'll deal with it and survive. And in the end, we'll realize how awesome our lives really are, and feel blessed for all of the good things that do happen to us on a daily basis. Everyone has trials, which are put in front of us to make us stronger and to bind us closer together. And in a few days we get to celebrate a new year, which allows us a new breath of hope and optimism for all of the opportunities that are there for us to find. Happy holidays everyone!
Another Try
11 years ago
