Balance Billing

When I spent a few hours in a hospital emergency room a while back, I didn't realize that my problem would turn out to be more financial than medical. The total bill for this short medical interlude was over $5,000. My three insurance companies paid what they said were reasonable charges, leaving a remainder of almost $3,000. In a small note on my primary insurer's EOB (explanation of benefits) form, I read that I might be contacted by their customer complaint agent because they suspected that I was a victim of "balance billing."

Balance billing? Gee, it sounded benign. I guess I was thinking "balanced billing." I imagined it to mean "fair and just" billing by the billing entity. Wrong! Balance billing is, according to an article in Business Week, an illegal practice of certain health care providers of demanding from patients more than what the insurers are willing to pay. According to the article, we patients are paying over $1 billion dollars a year in medical costs for which we are not responsible.

Balance billing occurs because hospitals are forced to treat patients who do not have insurance and who cannot pay, so hospitals attempt to recoup their losses by over billing patients who do have insurance. When insurance companies refuse to pay more than the standard costs, the health care providers demand payment from the patients for the remaining amount and in most instances, the patients pay because they fear that if they don't it will damage their credit ratings. In other words, hospitals "balance" out their books, by getting one patient to pay the other patient's bill.

Luckily, in my case, my primary insurance company was on the ball. Their customer service agent contacted me about this balance billing situation and explained what the hospital was doing to me. As of now, the customer service agent is filing a complaint on my behalf for this excessive amount.

Believe me, I appreciate the health care community. Doctors, nurses, and medical care people deserve to be paid well and hospitals deserve to make a reasonable profit. But, balance billing is an underhanded, devious tactic that takes advantage of patients' fear and lack of knowledge. If you find yourself in a situation where you believe you have been over billed for a medical service, don't just blithely pay up. Contact your insurance company. Get an itemized bill and scrutinize it carefully and ask about each item. Do a little research. Don't be a victim.

Have you ever experienced balance billing? If so, what did you do about it?

(photo by sgroi @ www.flickr.com)

Don't Be Afraid

Lola of Lola's Diner posted recently about an experience she had when she met a group of online friends in person. It was not a positive experience for Lola and that memory haunts her and causes her to wonder if she should attend our planned bloggers' get-together for Chicago area people in April.

I say to Lola and to all other Chicago area bloggers, please don't be afraid! Our get-together will be for a mere two hours (not an entire weekend as Lola's bad experience was). You can come late and leave early if you like! Or you can come early and leave late--I will be there for you!

All we are going to do is drink coffee (or tea or soda or water) and talk and get to know each other better. I feel I already know many of you from your blogs and I would love to put a face to a name (and a blog). I hope you feel the same.

I am delighted that Lola is planning on attending (at least tentatively), particularly considering her bad experience. If there is one thing I have learned about Lola from her blog it is that she is adventurous and definitely not a quitter!

I hope you will be like Lola. If you live in the Chicago area and are contemplating attending our get-together but have any misgivings, please contact me and let's talk about them.

Don't be afraid!

Quick Updates

• My physician has me trying a third medication (Flexorol) and is sending me in for an MRI this week and has scheduled me to see a neurologist next month. I'm really working on trying to eliminate this extremely long migraine.
• My husband read my post about how long he wears his at-home shirts (ooops!). He says to tell you all that he would never wear a shirt six months, let alone a year. He changes his shirts seasonally.
• So far we have one confirmed attendee at our Blogger get-together on April 26. A few others have expressed interest and plan to let me know. If you can attend, please let me know.

(photo by sleepy_terry @ www.flickr.com)

You're Probably Sick of My Sickness

In addition to struggling with a very resistant migraine, I am now contending with a recurrent case of TMJ or temporomandibular joint disorder. I experienced TMJ last year for the first time and it was excruciating. It feels like someone is ripping your jaw out of its socket. It was so bad last night that it superseded my migraine in severity.

When I saw my doctor on Wednesday, she prescribed a drug called Tramidol for my migraine. Since then, I have been trying to take this medication in small increments--starting with 1/16 of a tablet on Wednesday and finally I was up to 3/8 of a tablet yesterday. However, as the dosage increased, the side effects increased (this is typical with me and prescription pain killers). By last night, the nausea was so extreme that I decided to stop the Tramidol.

It was just about this time that the TMJ hit me. Maybe it was there all along and I didn't notice it because I was taking the Tramidol. However, I knew that I could use a therapy for TMJ that I had tried when I had it last year that had worked and that was an over-the-counter medicine called "Head-On." It is an ointment that is applied to the sore area. It is supposedly for headaches, but has never worked for my migraines. However, I have found that it does work for TMJ. So, last night, I rubbed some Head-On all over my left jaw and went to bed. It took several hours for it to take effect, but eventually the TMJ pain subsided and I was able to sleep.

This morning, the TMJ pain is much less than yesterday, although it is still there and I can tell that I will not be able to talk or chew today. I will probably have to apply some more Head-On, but I have found that the effect of the Head-On is fairly long--up to 24 hours. I am not sensing much migraine, but, again, that may be because the TMJ pain is so strong, it may just overwhelm any other sensation.

This post will be the extent of my blogging for today. I know many of you have told me you also have migraines. Do any of you ever get TMJ? If so, what do you do about it?

(photo by ricko @ www.flickr.com)

Do You Really Know Your Mate?

You'd think that after almost 27 years of marriage that I would really know my husband Milt. Not so, evidently! Here's what happened while we were watching television the other night.

Milt: Oh, I popped a button on my shirt!

Me: That's okay. I'll sew it back on for you. Just take it off and give it to me.

Milt: No, that's all right. This shirt is getting old and smelly. It's about time to throw it away.

Me: Throw it away? That's ridiculous. Just give it to me and I'll wash it.

Milt: I never wash my at-home shirts. I just throw them out when they get old and dirty.

Me: You never wash your shirts? I wash your shirts every time I do the laundry.

Milt: Those are my public shirts. My at-home shirts I never put in the wash because I don't like how they feel when they are clean.

Me: What?

Milt: When an at-home shirt gets too old and dirty, I just throw it away and open a package of new shirts.

Me: That's wasteful!

Milt: No, it isn't. I wear one shirt for a really long time before I throw it out.

Me: How long have you been wearing the one you have on?

Milt: Oh, maybe six months, a year. I don't know.

Me: You've been wearing this shirt for a year without ever washing it?

Milt: Right! It's getting pretty rank. Time to throw it out.

Me: But if you washed it, it would last even longer! Not to mention, it wouldn't stink!

Milt: Maybe, but I don't like wearing clean shirts. They feel better when they're broken in.


Just to note, my husband, in all other respects has excellent personal hygiene. I report this amazing dialogue as I remember it as a comment on my unbelievable lack of observational skills. How could I be married to this man for this long without ever realizing that he wore the same shirt at home every day without ever washing it? It makes me wonder if there are any other things about Milt that I don't know. When he's "out" at the Post Office, is he really visiting a mistress or gambling away our life savings at a casino? Who knows!

Have any of you ever had a revelation such as this about your significant other?

(photo by katbaro @ www.flickr.com)

Two Updates

First, for those of you who have been so thoughtful in your concern about the lengthy migraine headache I have been having, I saw my doctor on Monday and got a new prescription for Zomig which is the drug I usually take. It has not worked very well this time, however, because I was not able to take it right at the beginning of the headache when it works best. For the forty some years I have had migraines, I have seen various types of physicians, primarily neurologists and have undergone numerous diagnostic tests and multiple treatments (acupuncture, biofeedback, etc.) as well as every type of drug imaginable. My major difficulty in dealing with migraine is that most physicians prescribe a narcotic painkiller like Fiorinol for entrenched migraines such as the one I have now. Unfortunately, my body cannot tolerate any type of narcotic painkiller (they make me feel worse than the migraines), so I typically just have to wait for the migraine to go away on its own. That can take days, weeks, or in some rare cases—months. I am trying to be patient and take it one day at a time. I have another appointment with my doctor for this afternoon.

Second, several of you in the Chicago area replied to my query about having a bloggers’ support get-together some time in the near future. I am going to be bold and set a specific date, time, and location. Any bloggers who would like to attend, please come. If just one person shows up, I will enjoy chatting with you about blogging. I would truly appreciate it if you would let me know if you plan to attend. Just send me a comment with your name, name of your blog, and your email address and let me know that you intend to come to the get-together. I will not post your comment, but will keep a list of the people who plan to attend so I can make certain we will have enough room. I will post an announcement about our get-together on my sidebar soon and will keep you updated from time to time as to the number of people planning to attend.

First Chicago and Western Suburbs Bloggers’ Support Get-Together
Date: Sunday, April, 26, 2009
Time: 2:00-4:00 P.M. (I will be there by 1:00 P.M. and stay until 5:00 P.M.)
Location: Panera Bread (restaurant and coffee shop)
(630) 820-1030
740 N Route 59, Aurora, IL 60504

If coming from Chicago, head west on I-88 and take the Rt. 59 Exit, south. Panera Bread is on the right side of the street in a shopping center a mile or two south of the exit. Check the Panera Bread website for additional directions and location information.

(photos by chanzezare and roboppy @ www.flickr.com)

Therapy

Several days of bed rest did little to soothe my migraine, but amazingly, logging on to my blog and reading your comments has done wonders to alleviate some of my pain. Thank you, my friends for your kind and therapeutic words.

I have a doctor appointment later this morning. Hopefully, she will provide some additional relief.

(photo by creepylesbo @ www.flickr.com)

Valentine's Day--A Year Ago

I will never forget Valentine's Day last year. My husband and I had just moved to Illinois after retiring from our teaching jobs in Louisiana and I had accepted a one-year Visiting Assistant Professorship in Communication at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois--about a 30-mile commute from our new home in Aurora. I had no classes that day. It was late afternoon and my mother called to ask me if I had seen the news about my school on television.

I quickly turned on my TV set to discover reporters announcing that a student had gone into a mass lecture hall on the NIU campus and opened fire with an automatic weapon. Students were reported killed. The police had arrived quickly and it appeared the gunman had been killed or had taken his own life. My husband and I were glued to the unfolding story on television, as family and friends who knew that I worked on the NIU campus started calling to see if I was all right.

I was all right--at least physically. Emotionally, however, I still haven't recovered to this day. When classes resumed over a week after the tragedy, I (and I'm sure the rest of the faculty) attempted to be strong for the students when we were feeling anything but strong ourselves. The NIU administration and campus security did a terrific job in addressing the aftermath of the shootings, but for me, there wasn't anything much that could be done to bring back a sense of normalcy--except time. Logic told me I was being foolish, but every time I turned a corner, every time I stepped out of an elevator, every day when I entered my classroom, I expected to find myself facing a gun. The rest of that semester was agony for me, but I tried to conceal my anguish from my students and did everything possible to provide them as normal an educational experience as possible.

When the school year ended and I was finally officially retired, I breathed a sigh of relief for more than just the end of my academic career; I breathed a sigh of relief for the end of this long torturous nightmare that had begun on Valentine's Day, 2008. I hoped that my retirement would be a new beginning for me, and I fervently hoped that my students would recover and thrive too.

And yet, as the anniversary of the shootings approached this week, I found myself crying more and more, fighting an intently resistant migraine headache, and simply unable to erase the images from my mind of that horrific day. For me, Valentine's Day will never be the same again.

(photo by prisspants @ www.flickr.com)

Out of Commission

I will be out of commission as I try to recuperate from a nasty migraine and will not be posting for a while. Working on the computer just aggravates the problem so this note will be brief. Sorry about that. I will not be dropping or commenting on my favorite sites either until I feel better. I will post the same information on my other blog Communication Exchange.

Happy Birthday, Little Sister!

My little sister Chris (little in height and age—compared to me, but certainly not little in heart), has a birthday tomorrow. I took her to the movies this weekend to celebrate.

We saw New in Town with Renée Zellweger and Harry Connick, Jr. Supposedly this movie got poor reviews from the critics, but Chris and I really enjoyed it. It’s a romantic comedy and most movie reviewers are male and I think many of them simply don’t get romantic comedies the way women do.

Anyway, Chris and I laughed and cried and ate popcorn and had a great time. I suggest that if you go see New in Town, you go see it with your sister (or at least a good girl friend). This advice is for women, because probably all the tea in China won’t entice men to see it (at least if they’re anything like my husband).

What do you think? Can men really appreciate romantic comedies?

Support for Addicted Bloggers

My friend Clara at Coming Back to Life has sent me a fabulous blogging award with the request to send it on to five other bloggers, who are:

1. Christina Talks

2. Diary of a Mad Editor

3. The English Teacher

4. Venessa Giunta's Writing Journey

5. Searching For Me

and also to list five of my addictions, which are:

1. working out at Curves

2. lattes

3. Bubblicious watermelon bubblegum

4. anything written by Dean Koontz

5. blogging

I assume that almost all bloggers who have to list their addictions have listed blogging. I mean, blogging is not an addiction in the medical sense--such as a drug or alcohol addiction. However, there is a passion, an urgency, a sense of being driven involved in blogging that one might encounter in--I am guessing--various psychological obsessive behaviors.

Maybe what we addicted bloggers need is a support group--a place where we could get together and discuss our blogging addiction. I would volunteer to organize a meeting for bloggers in the western Chicago suburbs. Maybe in April, when the weather clears? Anyone interested?

Bloggers and Non-Bloggers

Yesterday I went out to lunch with a dozen new lady friends from my gym. We had a great time. It is wonderful to make new friends and these gals are truly a super bunch. I know that most of them are computer-savvy as they plan their outings via e-mail, but so far nothing any of them has said has led me to believe that any of them are bloggers.

A while back I mentioned to one of these ladies that I was a blogger and she looked at me like I was an ax murderer. I was so taken aback by her reaction that I have not mentioned my blogging hobby to any of my other gym friends because I do not wish to antagonize them.

I realize that I compartmentalize my blogging life and my "regular" life. Only family members and a few very close friends are even aware that I am a blogger. Unfortunately, none of these people are also bloggers. I yearn to converse face-to-face with a fellow blogger--someone who will not perceive me as some sort of deviate because I maintain an online site.

How about you, my blogging sisters and brothers? Do you have a blogging compatriot in your real life with whom you can discuss all things blog?

(photo by rosiewills @ www.flickr.com)

First of the Year Tops

Here are Subjective Soup's Top Droppers for January. I will announce Top Droppers for my other blog Communication Exchange tomorrow. These bloggers are excellent neighbors. They all visited me EVERY day (or almost everyday) during the month of January. Many of them even stopped to visit and leave comments. Please click on their images and check out their great blogs. You will also probably find out what great neighbors they are.

The Top Droppers widget on my right sidebar gives a cummulative list of bloggers who have visited over time--not just for January. The same thing goes for the Top Commenters.

The three posts that received the most responses during January were the one about my troubles with my gas stove, my television night date with my husband, and my feelings about making money (or not) by blogging.

Thanks again, fellow bloggers.