People always say that having a baby is expensive. And they're right. From birth to college, adding a tiny human to your household can tack on an inordinate expense. I've seen estimates that, through age 18, it costs a quarter of a million dollars to raise a child. Given the number of activities my children will likely want to be involved in, I'm considering that an underestimate.
What people don't talk about, and what is currently infuriating to me, is the sheer bureaucracy underlying many of those expenses. I'm a very smart person. I am well educated. My husband is at least as smart as I am and has even more education. Yet between the two of us, we have managed to be confounded by medical billing since the Pumpkin was born.
The first thing that happens is simple enough - they send you a bill. You should just be able to pay it, move on, and have some ice cream. But we have yet to get a bill that we have just paid. Most of them come to us with some kind of problem, all of which have been related to our insurance. So once you get the bill, you have to call your care provider and have them remind you what in the bloody heck happened on June 14, 2014, that supposedly cost upwards of $2500. Once you know what they did (and assuming you haven't been mistakenly billed for something that never happened, or that happened to someone else), then you have to call the insurance.
The insurance people will go through a very long litany of introductory messages and notices, and after about 15 minutes you might actually be talking to a real person. Hopefully they are helpful. If they can't tell you anything more than, "My notes just say you weren't covered by our insurance," then you can feel free to tell them they are abysmally wrong and let them know that now you have to talk to a supervisor. Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything.
By the time you're talking to a person who actually knows anything about anything, you can count it as the first miracle of your sainthood if you're not swearing up a storm and reminding them every third sentence that you are a licensed attorney who won't have to deal with attorney's fees when you sue them because you'll be doing all the legal work yourself.
At which point, your first step is to explain to them that you were, in fact, covered by their insurance at the time of service. Yes, I know it shows that I am not insured with you right now. But I was at the time of service, and that's what counts. Yes, you can check your system. Yes, I am correct. Yes, I'm still here after 5 more minutes of hold music. Yes, I have been through this before. Yes, I would love it if you would actually submit this information to your processing department so you can begin the long process of actually paying the insanely inflated bill for my flu shot (or whatever it was).
About a month or so later, you'll get the second bill from the medical folks. They'll tell you that they haven't been paid yet. They won't give you any additional information beyond that because they don't have any, no matter how many different people you are transferred to. None of them know anything. The CIA should take notes from these guys.
So you call the insurance folks again. After going through the first five circles of hell, they allow you to speak to someone who knows something about something, and you ask why they haven't paid yet. What you will likely find out this time is that the service was not coded properly. If the service code doesn't match the diagnosis code, then they won't pay. Yes, they will be happy to tell you what those codes are. Yes, they will be happy to repeat those 35 numbers for you a bit slower this time. No, they do not have any idea what those codes are or what other magic numbers your care provider needs to give them to make the money start pouring out of their tight little insurance fingers.
At this point, you wonder why you bother. Maybe you should just rob a bank. Or ransom some globally influential CEO or dignitary. Maybe you could even steal the nuclear launch codes and sell them to Greenpeace. Because all of those things (including Greenpeace somehow having the money to buy said codes) would be far less difficult than actually doing this over and over for every god blessed bill you get. Because, much like parenting, it's not one day or one bill that wears you down and makes you dream of changing your name and escaping to an uncharted tropical island. (No, I don't know how I will get there if it's uncharted. Yes, it's still easier than dealing with medical billing and insurance.) It's the thought that you have to keep doing it. Over and over.
With the billing, there will come a day when it's done. And I suppose with the children, there will come a day when they are out of the house and living on their own. But once you're a parent, that's it. You have forever changed the course of your life. No going back, no end to it. Ever.
Thankfully, that's the difference between medical bills and children. With children, you don't ever want it to end. Even when they're screaming, with weird gunk coming out of their eyes, nose, and some third orifice that depends on the time of day and cycle of the moon, you love them so much your heart feels like it's going to rupture right out of your chest.
Of course, you don't literally have your heart explode like that. If it did, you'd have to go through all that medical billing stuff again.
Take care, my friends, and I'll write again soon!
Having worked for numerous doctors and two hospitals in medical billing AND at an insurance company I can assure you, it's this way on purpose. Nobody knows how to do any of this stuff. That's their job. But I loved the times when Medicare or Blue Cross would return my claims where I had signed in the spot for "Billing Physician or their Representative" with a note that this doctor's signature was not in their files. Um . . . 'kay
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