I went out for a high-speed drive across town for a sense of perspective. Needed to get myself outside of myself for a while because I’m really, really in the middle of it. Right now, I’m a dog in a corner, and I’m ready to bite.
Today, I got a bomb dropped on me in the form of two envelopes from my health insurance carrier. Inside is a pair of Explanation of Benefits (EOB). Remember back in March and April when I saw the chiropractor because my back was messed up and I needed help in a bad way? Well, I finally got the insurance statements from all those visits. The end result is that my insurance carrier won’t pay for a single thing; their rejection reason is that the chiropractor isn’t in network. That’s Bullshit with a capital B.
When I was looking for help, I called the clinic; I’ve been to this clinic for 7 years…my general practitioner is there. And, for a while, so was the chiropractor. So I called the office to check, to see if I would be covered if I saw her for my back. The operator said she’d have to pass on the question to the billing department. They called me back and confirmed to the positive that I would have coverage, so I made the first of a series of appointments.
The first visit was nothing but a consultation on Monday. She then sent me for X-rays which I took that day. Then, since she didn’t show up to the office for my appointment on Wednesday, I had to come in Thursday to look over the X-rays and come up with a treatment plan. THEN, finally, had a visit Friday to pop my back into shape…two weeks after injury. She wanted me to visit three times the next week (office visits are $30 copay each time), but I whittled it down to two visits. By the end of that week, it was revealed that she was no longer a member of the clinic and that she would start her own practice elsewhere. So, I didn’t visit her again.
I had been waiting on the EOBs from the visit, but suspected something was dreadfully wrong. All my other EOBs from all the other visits to the various doctors I see produce an EOB from my insurer in short time. Something had to be wrong, and fucking hell, it was very wrong. I tallied up the charges from those five visits and the X-rays: $1270. You read that correctly.
My blood is boiling; I haven’t felt this level of rage in years. It’s an impotent rage because in the wash of corporate displacement and beaurocratic process, I have no target. No one is to blame. Nobody is at fault, and my only recourse is to play the game. I was provided an address to submit a written appeal; you can damn-well believe I’ll appeal. This is Bullshit. If I had known that the chiropractor was out of network, I would not have fucking gone for the first visit, let alone all five. I was lied to. I believed the lie. The one who lied to me didn’t know they were lying. Misinformation happened.
My teeth are grinding. Whatever it was I was doing in my life, whatever I had planned for the weekend, it’s fucked. My teeth are grinding. I’m in a corner, and I am ready to bite.