Inconvenient Annoyances

I knew celebration was premature when last week we received the letter from our health insurer saying that the $1700 bill they had rejected last October was an error and that they would pay the bill shortly (only took 4 hours on the phone and filing a grievance to make them see their error).

In the mean time I paid the bill so it wouldn't go to collections.   The provider gave me a discount for paying in full and promised a refund if insurance paid.   SO in the first week of January they billed $1200 to our credit card and sent an email to confirm the account was settled.  The charge is there on our most recent statement.

Yesterday we received a "final notice: your account is going to collections".   They billed our credit card for $1200 but only credited the account by $25.  Thus we're way past due and headed to collections.

So another hour on the phone with the provider today to try to get them to rectify this before we have a medical bill collection notice on our credit report.

Why oh why oh why do American's put up with this ?   The best comment I read about US healthcare was from a British expat who said US healthcare combines Soviet era bureaucracy with Darwinian capitalism.

1. The dog (owned by DS's friend sharing the house) pooped on the carpet in one of the bedrooms.  Cleaned it up but the stink of the cleaning stuff is doing my head in. 

2. Dog (German shepherd) made a lunge at our cat -- who defended himself nobly. 

3. Next blizzard due this afternoon into tomorrow.

We had a group of 60 in at work who was leaving early today and requested breakfast at or just before 6 instead of 6:30 as it is supposed to be on weekends. So, I get out of bed at 4:15, rush through showering and getting there, including half drying my hair and heading out into frigid temps so I can get there before 5 to start. They all showed up at once, but I was ahead of the game enough to always have more food to put out, and coffee to swap for empty carafes. It flowed better than I expected for that big of a crowd.

However.. Two of the 60 said thank you. No tips, and two thank yous. I didn't expect them to swoon at my feet in gratitude while throwing money at me, but a small tip here and there and/or a few more thank yous would have been appreciated. Maybe I am being crabby after getting up so early, but because the breakfast hours on weekends are from 6:30, I wouldn't have had to accommodate them, but did to be nice.

It is a free breakfast at a hotel, so I never expect tips, but do get quite a few. People seem to appreciate a free full breakfast of sausage or bacon, turkey sausage, biscuits and gravy, and either scrambled eggs or cheese omelettes, plus oatmeal, cereal, muffins, bagels, yogurt, toast, English muffins and boiled eggs.

BostonDiner - hydrogen peroxide (dilute from CVS) works wonders on cat pee - removes all stains and smells, plus it doesn't smell itself.   Works on cat throw up as well.   And blood.

Two neighbors have water leaking through the roof due to ice dams ... hoping we;re not next.  Please no more snow.   Or rain.   40F and sun would be very nice for a few days to help clear the ice dams, but there's nothing above 30F in the 10 day forecast.

Latest vexations from across the shining sea seem to be healthcare related:

1. Have just written out checks to help DS with recent medical expenses -- came to over $1000 for co-pays and one bill the insurance wouldn't touch.  So glad he has health insurance  

2. Wondering why I haven't had a reminder phone call about my dermatologist appointment tomorrow, went on my patient portal and it says I have no appointments!!     And today is a holiday ...

US healthcare woes are so frustrating. When you are sick or have a medical emergency, the last thing you want to worry about is if you should even bother because of the payments. But to have it where your appointment doesn't seem to exist is even more annoying.

Hubby is currently in bed with the plague, possibly the flu, or something with similar symptoms. He missed work today and there is no way he is going to make it tomorrow.  He needs to see a doctor, but to keep our insurance affordable we have a $5,000 deductible each, so he is determined to avoid going. He says he doesn't want a doctor bill on top of missing two, maybe more, days of work.

Ahh, been there before in my life Tama.    (except it was no insurance, instead a terribly high deductible) Hope he feels better soon.

Ahh, been there before in my life Tama.    (except it was no insurance, instead a terribly high deductible) Hope he feels better soon.

Thanks! He's now to that feeling bad, feeling better, feeling bad, wash, rinse and repeat stage, where you go from ready to conquer the world to being a death's door again in seconds. Suppose that means he is on the mend. He actually ate today.

But the drama gets worse. In the mail today, there was a letter from Anthem Blue Cross saying we have been cancelled for non-payment. We have been trying for a year to get set up on direct debit, but they can't seem to get it together to send us the paperwork for it. So, I call every month  and pay. In December it slipped my mind til the end of the month (hooray for grace periods!), so I went ahead and paid January's premium to save time. Today, we get the notification we were cancelled January 1st, and they are are just now telling us, because we didn't pay January's premium. It is due by the 5th, so why we were cancelled on the 1st makes no sense, even if I hadn't paid in December.

So, after being on the phone to two different places, for over an hour, I still have no answers. A case was opened to expedite things, and someone will call within the next 30 days with some information. So, in addition to being uninsured since the first of the year, we are going to be uninsured up to another month!

Gosh I miss the NHS.

My experience is that Anthem are the biggest bunch of lieing, cheating, grossly incompetent crooks in the health insurance business.   And they have competition.
90% of their phone support people are either incompetent or dishonest.

I wish you the best of luck TamaMoo - and I hope you can find a better insurer next time around.

Meanwhile in Massachusetts many of our friends and neighbors now have roof damage (either leaking or structural) from this winter's extraordinary snowfall.  We're crossing our fingers we're not next because I think it might force us to abandon moving to the UK this summer while we fix the house (so many people are reporting damage I think finding a contractor to fix it will take many months).   I must have spent over 12 hours raking my roof and helping various folks around rake theirs this weekend.

Yeah, insurance providers are generally totally unhelpful if not complete crooks.

Update on my appointment:  phoned the health service at 8 AM on the day and asked them to clarify.  Woman said the doctor was "out" (for something like "family service" ?) and they didn't know when she'd be back (?)    Said they'd sent out phone messages to all the patients concerned.  Well, I didn't get one -- I checked several times.  When I explained I had just flown across the ocean primarily to keep the appointment -- and yes it was for a skin cancer check -- she said she'd try to get me an appointment with another doctor before I'm due to leave.  As I don't have a car and will have to rely on DS getting time off to take me (T even more unreliable than usual) I don't think it's going to work.  We'll see.

After another hour and a half on the phone today, I am still no closer to getting my paper. I can't get it from the website, as I am supposed to easily do, because their website is crap. So, I suppose the saga begins again tomorrow when I call them yet again. I have been on the phone with them for close to six hours this week, and they want to know why I am getting short tempered with them. Every time you get passed to another person they want you to verify yourself with name, birth date, street address and phone number. I have started giving them my shoe size too, in case. They don't get the funny side of that.

Best of luck Tama Moo.   After more healthcare billing issues today I'm ready to get on a plane to the UK walk into the US embassy and renounce.

We got a small leak in the roof today from all the snow, but fortunately it ran along the underside of the roof and down the outer wall.   Cue a scary trip up a ladder to hack a channel in the ice dam and lay a salt (MgCl) filled sock in the channel to drain the roof, plus another hour with a ridiculously long roof rake trying to get snow off the very top of the roof.

Rain/snow mix forecast for Sat night into Sunday so that will be the acid test.   I have a feeling if we can make it through this next storm we'll be all set.

We're still no closer to having our insurance reinstated, but after another 40some minutes, and a couple bad words when I finally had enough of the woman acting like she had no clue what I was talking about, on the phone this morning, I finally got the answers we needed for the form we were able to get from the IRS website. All that time, and when I finally got her to give them to me, I had them all in about 2 minutes.I suppose the magic words were "If you'd actually look at your d@mn computer, you'd see the information I need right in front of you". Fingers crossed that is the taxes finished now.

New IA: We came home to frozen pipes. The apartment below us is still empty, and the landlords had the furnace set to 50, which didn't help the pipe situation. We woke up to a temp of -9f, and had water. Sometime during the day, they froze, although we have made it to a balmy 8f. Maintenance came out and tried to thaw them, but nothing so far. Sigh.

We got a small leak in the roof today from all the snow, but fortunately it ran along the underside of the roof and down the outer wall.   Cue a scary trip up a ladder to hack a channel in the ice dam and lay a salt (MgCl) filled sock in the channel to drain the roof, plus another hour with a ridiculously long roof rake trying to get snow off the very top of the roof.

Yup.  DH spent all afternoon up the ladder scraping snow off roof and hacking at the ice dams.  Thing is the back of the house is pretty much unreachable.  But we've survived previous frozen gutters and downspouts.  Fingers crossed.

Although we went 24 hours without water, I keep reminding myself it could be so much worse, and we don't have to try to clear our roof to keep it from collapsing. My heart goes out to all who are fighting that battle.

We're still no closer to answers about our insurance. Apparently, 'expedited' means sometime between now and never. Funny how you are perfectly healthy until you can't go to a doctor. Since finding out about this, hubs was in bed sick for 2 1/2 days, and now is down with his back, and I woke up this morning with a headache and what feels like is the beginning of a sinus infection.