The Simple Life at Home

You know, I truly appreciate modern conveniences - refrigerators, cars, A/C and all that. But sometimes the old ways were truly better. I've just spent the last hour and a half on the phone with both my health insurance company, a physician's billing office and the hospital's billing office. I'm a little fed up. I've been put on hold enough, been talked to as if I'm both a liar and an idiot, had to call two of the places repeatedly and we still aren't settled up.

The problem started a few weeks ago on a Saturday night when I had a very sharp, splittling pain in the back of my head. Now, I get headaches frequently, but never anything like this so I went to our local urgent care just to be safe. When I got there I realized that my insurance card wasn't in my wallet, but the registration clerk assured me that he looked me up and it would be all taken care of. So after waiting for almost 2 hours, I then saw the doctor who (and I am not making this up!) accused me of being depressed. He couldn't find anything wrong with me after about spending 1 minute with me, said my blood pressure was fine and to go home. I got frustrated with being dismissed like this and he honestly said to me, "Why are you upset? Are you sad like this all the time? What's wrong with your life?"

All this of course got me more upset. Finally he left and a nurse comes in and tells me, "We need to recheck your blood pressure as it read very high when you checked in." Um, excuse me? The doctor just said it was fine. He hadn't even looked at it! The chart said my blood pressure was 147/100! And he didn't even catch it! She re-took it and it was actually 115/80 so apparently the previous machine wasn't working well. She gave me some good advice for helping with the pain and I finally left.

Then Saturday I get a bill for the doctor's services for $220. And yesterday another for $233 the urgent care bill. The registration man had never input my insurance info. So we've been trying to get that straightened out and I am sitting here thinking about "Little House on the Prairie." I'd rather give my doctor some eggs, or a chicken or, heck, even a cow, than deal with insurance people.

But if it was this doctor again, the eggs he'd get would be rotten.