Angry

I’m feeling much better this morning.  I actually slept last night (thank you Advil PM) and can breathe out of my nose again.  That good progress considering the state I was in yesterday.  I’m still taking it a little easy today to keep the healing process going but at least I don’t feel the need to wallow on the couch all day long only getting up to get more tea or hot chocolate or use the bathroom.  Yes, today is a happier day.  Hooray!  Wildbound, if you’re okay with some residual coughing, I’m still up for apples tomorrow.

Anyway, on to my tragic tale.

Last year we moved from California to Utah.  It was a rather horrendous move, we found our apartment unclean and unfinished, and  Peanut got really sick and we had to take her to the ER.  Since we had left CA literally just a couple of days before we didn’t have insurance in Utah yet but still had coverage through Medi-Cal.  Perhaps you recall my delightful interactions with Medi-Cal.  I won’t link to them but trust me, they are in my archives.  They’re usually filed under the category “swear words.”  I’m not typically a curser but, oh, Medi-Cal.  That is something that makes me swear.  Now I’m adding hospital Billing to that list, too.  Back to today’s story, though. . . so at the hospital I gave them our Med-Cal cards and Peanut was treated and off we went on our merry way.  Well, not really, Peanut was still barfing for another few days and I cried for several days after that and it took me another month to even hang anything in our apartment I was in such a funk, but you get the idea.  That was the end of our interaction with the hospital.

Until this last April.  Yeah.  We took Peanut to the ER in JUNE!  So I got a bill in April from the hospital’s billing company for roughly $1200.  I called and told them they needed to bill Medi-Cal.  They looked into my file and told me they had billed Medi-Cal but the bill was sent back because it had been coded wrong.  Cuz, you know, Medi-Cal can’t just take normal coding.  Oh, nooo.  So they told me they’d get it recoded and send it back.  They said they would let me know if there was a problem.  I said okay and thought it would be taken care of.

I was wrong.

I didn’t hear anything for a while so I called back to see where we were.  The billing people gave me some reassurance everything was okay and told me it just takes some time.  They said it had to be reviewed before it could be recoded.  Okay.  I can understand that.

Then I had Wingnut, like, the next day.

And a few weeks later I called them again since I still hadn’t heard anything.  Apparently the review had been stuck someplace but they dug it out and pushed it to the front of the stack of papers and would get it taken care of.  They said they would let me know.

Then I got a bill telling me if I didn’t pay the $1200 it could effect my credit.  Now, ODD and I have really good credit.  We want to keep it that way.  So I called the hospital’s billing company.  Again.  I told them about the Collections thing.  They looked at the records and told me they’d put a hold on it the day before (so after the letter had been sent but before I had received it).  They told me they had recoded the claim and were re-sending it to Medi-Cal the next day.  Okay.  I could deal with that.

Then we moved.  Again.

And I still didn’t hear anything.  So I called and they told me they had just re-sent the bill and would let me know.

So I waited.  And waited.  And still didn’t hear anything.

Then on Tuesday I got a bill from a collections agency telling me I had 30 days to pay the $1200 or it would be reported to the credit bureau and would go on our credit report.  Not cool.

I was so done with waiting I got on the phone (and you all know my phone anxiety) and called collections.  I explained the situation and was told the best thing to do so it wouldn’t screw up my credit was to pay the bill and get reimbursed by Medi-Cal.  So I paid it.  Then I called Billing and talked to them about the situation.  They told me they had sent the bill but hadn’t heard anything back from Medi-Cal which is why they had sent it on to Collections.  Yeah.  Cool.  So I called Medi-Cal and got the biggest runaround of my life.  Three hours of being on the phone later and only talking to 3 actual human beings (everything is unhelpfully automated) I was finally able to leave a voice message for my worker (everything else I called only let me dial in my number – these people are idiots).  I never talked to my worker and my worked has never called me back.  Ever.  Even when I called him/her (see I don’t even know if my worker is a man or a woman!) all last summer, fall, and winter about canceling our Medi-Cal account after we’d moved.  Nothing.  It finally ran out in January when I didn’t renew it.  Then after the three hour runaround I found out I could talk to Blue Cross of California (BC of CA) which is who Peanut has coverage with through Medi-Cal.  I called them and was told to have Billing call them and they would get it straightened out.  Finally a little hope.  So I called Billing.  Told them to call BC of CA, gave them the number and account info. and they told me they’d get on it.

After my afternoon from hell I was so angry I was shaking.  It also didn’t help that I started getting sick that day and my throat only got worse after over three hours on the phone explaining about our situation again.  And again.  And again.  And again.

I was too angry and keyed up to eat anything.  I fed Wingnut, and left both kids with ODD while I went visiting teaching.  Our visits went longer than anticipated and while I was gone Wingnut got hungry and ODD couldn’t do anything about it so when I got home he was miffed.  I was still upset about being on the phone all freaking afternoon so needless to say we were a happy couple for a few hours.  By bedtime we’d mostly calmed down and by mostly I mean ODD had calmed down and I was still ticked.

I slept horribly.  I waited until noon to hear something from Billing.  Nothing came so I finally called them and there was no record of Billing having called BC of CA yet so the lady who answered told me to give them a few more hours.  So around 4 I called again.  I was told they were sending it right that minute.  Then I told them about my deal with Collections and that they’d told me to pay and get reimbursed.  They told me they’d put my account on hold again and that I should call and put a hold on the payment with Collections.

So I called Collections and was told it was too late.  They’d already run the $1200.  They also told me they couldn’t refund it.  I was a bit ticked about that.

Then I called BC of CA and told them to look for a bill.  The lady I talked to is named Janine and she is now my favorite person in the universe (please note she does NOT work for Med-Cal – those people would never have been this compassionate or helpful).  When I told her my story and all about the runaround I was getting and how my worker never returned any of my calls and about collections and everything she was so sympathetic and couldn’t believe how hard a time I was having.  She asked me if I’d be willing to hold while she called Billing herself.  I told her of course and she proceeded to find out what was going on.  Billing had no record of calling BC of CA because it doesn’t ring up as Medi-Cal so they kept thinking they were getting a wrong number (not sure why they didn’t call me to clarify but whatever).  So Janine told them exactly what on the bill needed to be recoded and they sent it to the recoding department while they were on the phone.  She also had them call Collections while she was on the phone with them and told them to have Collections refund the $1200 to my account.  She is an angel.  She told me it would take a little time because the claim has to be snail mailed, then processed into the system before she can access it.  She said I could call her on Wednesday the next week and she’d most likely have access to it by then and I could be reassured it was moving forward and I could be done with the whole situation once and for all.  So after an hour and a half on the phone with different people on Wednesday I finally felt like I was getting somewhere and had such a great sense of relief.

I’m going to write a note to both Janine and her supervisor thanking them for actually doing their jobs and helping me while everyone else behaved so incompetently.

Not having to pay for health insurance while in CA was a nice thing but with all the crap I’ve had to deal with, even when I haven’t lived there in over a year, is just ridiculous.  Sometimes I don’t know if it’s even worth it.  It also makes me positively furious that the three agencies can’t manage to talk to one another and, with the exception of Janine, expect me to do the work for them.  I’m also angry that because the three agencies don’t communicate and work it out themselves they feel okay about sending my account to Collections and threatening me with a blow to my credit when it isn’t even my problem!  It makes me angry because they know that’s the way they can get a result.

I’m just angry about the whole thing.