This is, from a distance, absolutely fantastic story material. My wife agrees, so I'm allowed to say that. We got rough news yesterday about possible kidney failure, and I posted about it here: Kidney failure + no insurance = me & my 22 y/o wife.
Well, circa 5:20 Mountain Time today, Saturday, she gets a call on her cell from a number that has called 6 times in the past two days, and one she doesn't recognize. My wife as an autistic spectrum disorder and prefers not to answer to strangers, but finally she picked up. It was a ROBOT CREDITOR, telling her she owed someone 105$. She called the number back and talked to a human, who informed her that the 105$ was owed to the doctors office that she went to one year ago — and get this: We had insurance back then, they were a preferred provider, AND my wife went in for similar although lesser symptoms to what she is currently experiencing but the physician at this office called her a hypochondriac and rejected her request for a blood test!
do read on...
To be specific (and I have to vouch for my wife; she has an almost savant like capacity to remember word for word dialogue - hell, she's Samuel Clemens' 5th or 4th or 6th great niece), the physician said essentially "You sound like a hypochondriac to me," and "it's not protocol just to do blood tests for no reason."
Obviously we are upset. It's the emotional frustration of getting a call from a robot creditor trying to collect for a standard checkup insurance was supposed to cover in the middle of a weekend where we are looking forward to incurring an absurd amount of debt to keep my wife alive. I am angry, and I know lots of you don't want to hear this because so many posted on the past posting and are concerned about my wife, but she went into the worst panic attack I've seen her have in at least two years. She's already been extremely upset over the idea of having to go into debt to deal with whatever might be wrong with her kidneys (I know one would think she'd be more upset about being deathly ill, but she's felt so sick for so long and had multiple physicians ignore her so she's a lot more pissed about the details and less upset about actually finally having her sickness validated), but this just made her feel hopeless, since it goes to show that even with insurance she's still going to get screwed.
So I just wrote them a letter by email... and I have to say that I can understand that the way our healthcare system works a physician can't expect zebras every time she hears hoofs. I expect if lots of people see this post I'll get called out by some for being so upset. But still. It's a good letter.
[.....] Healthcare,
My wife, [Ms. DanceattakJG], came to your facility a year ago (she was my girlfriend at the time). She had insurance through her employer and you were a provider. We just got a call from a collections agency saying we owe 105$ and are curious as to why.
This is exceedingly fascinating timing as it was just yesterday that the physician at the Utah State University Health and Wellness center called her back in immediately after blood tests showed an extraordinary high level of creatinine in her blood, signifiying kidney failure, and then sent us imediately to IHC for an ultrasound that cost us over 500 dollars as we have now lost our jobs and are uninsured. A nephrologist in Ogden has scheduled us for this coming monday, despite the fact that his first available appointment was May 12. When the physician told him the level of creatinine in my wife's blood after double testing to confirm, he said to bring her in as soon as possible. A nephrologist is a kidney specialist, which I feel I should explain to you since I'm not exactly sure of the medical expertise of your enterprise, given that it was one of your physicians who a year ago literally suggested to my wife that she was a hypochondriac and said she didn't need blood work done.
Considering the incorrectness of your medical advice, I'd imagine the insurance error was likely an error on your part in filing the insurance claim. I'd appreciate if you would check your records and let me know as to what the problem is, although considering that we will likely be filing for bankruptcy soon after her likely pending treatment for chronic kidney failure, the creditor and your "healthcare" organization are unlikely receive any payments from us.
Thanks for helping us catch it early. It sure would be frustrating if say, we had insurance a year ago and would have been able to get some help for my wife but an incompetent physician assumed she was whining, and then, following an axing of her company's medical benefits, at a time when we have absolutely no insurance, a competent physician recognized that she was deathly ill.
I'm absolutely curious as to what this 105$ is about, so please do let me know in a response.
Danceattakjg
So, I don't know if this diary has a point, except that I think I almost saw my poor wife die from a panic attack and I'm upset that even when we have insurance and go into a preferred provider for a standard yearly exam our system can function so poorly. My wife worked very hard to get out from under a large medical debt that she incurred when, in an exactly similar fashion, her Aetna insurance refused to pay. Her father requested she let him take care of the debt (before we were married but while we were dating, and it's a whole nuther story with her dad), and then he never did, even though he said he did, and her credit got so bad she couldn't open a checking account one day and that's when she found out and had to start paying it back.
So what my wife is freaking out about is that now she thinks her credit is ruined again, after jumping through all the damn hoops. It is pretty messed up, really.
It's so hard, because I want to tell my wife it's ok, if we just go into tons of debt and declare bankruptcy, or get on Medicare if she has ESRD (do we now, ahem, hope for this?), we can at least get the health care part taken care of. But I must say, she gets treated like shit in health care facilities. I think anyone out there with experience with Aspergers Syndrome can probably understand why. And it doesn't help that my wife is, in all honesty, very pretty, and then she has a very cold look on her face and female health industry workers give her really dirty looks because they think she is doing the same to them...I've seen it happen.
Anyway, she's on the phone with her dad right now who is saying that god is giving her the trials to get her attention because she's not focusing on him anymore, and if she would start going to church and get right with god she'd be doing ok. This is a man who believes that a woman should not have an abortion if she and the baby are going to die because it's god's will. haha. He's a character. We live 2500 miles away for a reason.