With all of the political noise regarding the upcoming vote in Congress over the national health care legislation, one would think that this is my effort to contribute my perspective on the issue. No. I’m much too narcissistic to care about someone else’s health care issues when I have my own. Also, I am not ashamed to admit that I am completely confused and lost as to what the legislative flavor of the month is for that mess of a bill.
This is not about Obama, Pelosi or anyone else that I’ve indirectly handed my tax dollars to in the hopes that they would take care of me and my neighbors. This is about me and Aetna.
Aetna sucks.
I am about to go into a whiny ass rant over nickels and dimes. This topic may be much too boring for some readers. Reader discretion is advised.
A seriously weird 6 week illness caused me to miss 4 weeks of work including 3 weeks of pay. Those 6 weeks included 3 trips to the ER, 3 trips to my doctor and 2 specialists my doctor sent me to. With all of my previous insurance companies, I’d never had to pay anything other than co pays which were miniscule but with so many visits to health care professionals, I started feeling the pressure of the co pays adding up.
As I make my recovery, the bills start arriving. First for a co pay the ER worker was too busy to charge me for while at the Hospital. Not a problem, knew that was coming. Then I get a crazy bill from the ER for hundreds of dollars. Huh?! When I went online to Aetna’s claims page, I found that so far, I owe various entities $800 and counting. Geez! I do have medical insurance don’t I?! Do these people know I’ve lost 3 weeks of pay?!
Frantic, I start shuffling through the claims trying to understand what I’m being billed for. As an example, I found one claim for $228 for a visit to a Dr.Rollon of which I owed $85. I called Aetna and explained that I never saw a Dr.Rollon. They said it was part of my bill for the ER visit and that Dr.Rollon was probably the Physician overseeing the Physician’s Assistant I actually did see.
I asked why I owed such a large percentage of the bill. Aetna explained that although the ER I went to was in their network, Dr.Rollon (whom I never saw) was not, thus I had to pay out of network fees for the visit. Additionally, supposedly the Physician’s Assistant gave me an “oxygenation” test that I don’t recall receiving and billed $60 for it. Well, Aetna thought the test was unnecessary and decided I should pay 100% of the test bill. Did anybody ask me if I wanted to purchase this test?! Of course, this bill is in addition to the $348 I have to pay just for walking through the ER door and lying down on a bed.
In the end, although there were tests she could have run to actually identify my ailment, the Physician’s Assistant opted to simply guess that I had the flu and tell me there’s nothing they can do for me. What followed was another 4 weeks of mysterious and severe illness and two more trips to the ER which resulted in a misdiagnosis in both cases…..that I had to pay an additional $300 for.
I’m thinking of writing my representatives and letting them know I won’t vote for them unless there’s a clause in the health care bill that ensures that Aetna will be stopped! …preferably with the use of predator drones.
No comments:
Post a Comment