Wow… an insane amount of bitch got strewn about the blog yesterday didn’t it? It’s just when there’s so much of it laying around, it’s hard to clean up properly.

I set the alarm 15 minutes earlier than usual for this morning (yeah, 15 minutes… I didn’t need to bitch that much, now did i?), and dragged my ass out to the computer to sit around for a few minutes waiting for the form to go live. Three minutes later it was filled out, printed out, and submitted. Now, the waiting game.

Of course, since the begging for classes registration process went rather smoothly, something else had to go wrong today. A couple days ago, I received an odd message on my home phone just saying the call was for me, from Kristen, with a 800 number. Sounds weird, yes? I googled the phone number and discovered it the phone number for the hospital’s billing office. Even odder… I sent them a check for my co-pay for my ER visit in June, and they cashed it. Turns out, it was a call to inform me that if I don’t pay them the $175 they say I owe the doctor, my bill will be turned over to a collection agency.

Here’s the problem… I went to an in-network ER and was seen by a… wait for it… out-of-network doctor (who I had no choice over). When the insurance company first said that they would only pay for his services (which amounted to him looking at my knee (and no other area I said hurt) and saying “It’s bruised; here’s some pain killers.”) at the out-of-network scale. My response to this was to sic my HR person on them because my insurance plan says my ER visits are covered 100% after a $35 co-pay as long as I go to an in-network hospital. The nice HR person told me they try to pull this a lot and that they are wrong. I sent her the claim info, she sent it on to her insurance contact, who emailed back saying that yes, indeed the visit should be covered 100% (minus co-pay) and the claim would be adjusted within 48 hours.

That was a week ago. Hence my surprise to get a call from the hospital demanding money. I called the insurance company to request that they please inform the hospital that the claim has been readjusted and I don’t owe them any money. But according to the lady at the insurance company, there’s been no new adjustment and I owe the doctor money. She also then told me that the plan I had up until April 1 would have covered the claim completely. This is interesting because the only change that happened to my plan was it went from a 100/50 POS to a 100/50 PPO… nothing changed except I can now see the PPO doctors and I don’t have to have a Primary Care Provider. (Isn’t this all terribly exciting?)

Unfortunately, I have been unable to get ahold of the HR person. I left a voicemail, and sent an email when I hadn’t heard back after several hours. This is driving me crazy with frustration… I need to go home and spin some more… although I don’t know how much spinning I can get done while watching a hockey game.