Not-so-Brief Encounters....
Mar. 23rd, 2014 05:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogThe bills have started to come in from Eleanor's two rounds of surgeries. Under the Wegmans plan, her out-of-pocket expense for the year (beyond premiums and scrips) is capped at $750, and she's already hit that, for sure. What's not sure is who's going to get paid before and after the thresholds; each of the two surgeries generates three separate bills- for physician, for ambulatory facility, and for anaesthesiologist. We haven't received any of those yet, but we did just get the bill from her primary practice, which was required to give her a pre-surgery clearance. That bill is a bit of a hoot. Maybe I'd just never noticed this before on others she had last year, but Lifetime Health doesn't use terms that you and I would, like "charge for service," "reduction per insurer fee schedule," and "balance due." No, here's how THEY put it:
When I saw that, I wondered whether Wegmans is selling her actual medical insurance or sending her to an EST seminar;)
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Once we figure out who's getting the $750, which I've already set aside in a health savings account, we'll have other things to spend the rest of that account on. We both wound up putting off dental appointments in the past few weeks, and while hers will likely be routine, I've got at least one busted filling to be dealt with. And then there's the knee: my left one has been getting progessively owier over the past few months, to the point where it doesn't shut up all night just lying in bed without putting pressure on it. (Oddly, no amount of cardio, or lower body weight work, seems to bother it nearly as much- other than a few specific exercises that isolate just that joint, like a step-up.) So there's an orthopod in my future, for sure, even if I have no idea who he (or she) is at the moment. I have little faith in any referrals from my primary (given what wonderful proctology and radiology referrals he gave me in recent years), and I don't need a referral from him, anyway, long as the practice is in-network for my particular brand of Blue Cross. But I pay every penny up to $2,000, with the out-of-pocket maximum running almost three times that, so I've got some incentive to shop around a bit before committing to one or the other.
----
On the other hand, I might do wonders for my knee's overnight pain by just evicting the tenants. Because this is the bed-hogging lump of love I woke up to this morning:
Tazzer (white boy on the left) is almost 15, and he's lived with Michelle (mostly black grrl on the right) for roughly half that time, but this is still pretty remarkable for them, cuddle-wise; most of the time, they barely tolerate each other, and far more often than this we see and hear them in unfortunate fur-pulling donnybrooks.
But hey. Even cats need a good "encounter" once in a while;)
When I saw that, I wondered whether Wegmans is selling her actual medical insurance or sending her to an EST seminar;)
----
Once we figure out who's getting the $750, which I've already set aside in a health savings account, we'll have other things to spend the rest of that account on. We both wound up putting off dental appointments in the past few weeks, and while hers will likely be routine, I've got at least one busted filling to be dealt with. And then there's the knee: my left one has been getting progessively owier over the past few months, to the point where it doesn't shut up all night just lying in bed without putting pressure on it. (Oddly, no amount of cardio, or lower body weight work, seems to bother it nearly as much- other than a few specific exercises that isolate just that joint, like a step-up.) So there's an orthopod in my future, for sure, even if I have no idea who he (or she) is at the moment. I have little faith in any referrals from my primary (given what wonderful proctology and radiology referrals he gave me in recent years), and I don't need a referral from him, anyway, long as the practice is in-network for my particular brand of Blue Cross. But I pay every penny up to $2,000, with the out-of-pocket maximum running almost three times that, so I've got some incentive to shop around a bit before committing to one or the other.
----
On the other hand, I might do wonders for my knee's overnight pain by just evicting the tenants. Because this is the bed-hogging lump of love I woke up to this morning:
Tazzer (white boy on the left) is almost 15, and he's lived with Michelle (mostly black grrl on the right) for roughly half that time, but this is still pretty remarkable for them, cuddle-wise; most of the time, they barely tolerate each other, and far more often than this we see and hear them in unfortunate fur-pulling donnybrooks.
But hey. Even cats need a good "encounter" once in a while;)
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Date: 2014-03-24 12:42 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2014-03-24 11:34 pm (UTC)