Tag: billing department

The Struggle Is Real

So I planned on Posting the Next installment of Lee Joints: Professional People Watcher Today, but to be quite frank I’m fucking worn out. There is some good News, well For Me anyways that I am happy to Report. Now You may have seen Me Ranting and Raving about the Fucked Up System of Highway Robbery Know as the American Healthcare System. That and You might have seen Me Enraged Railing Against the Outrageous fucking Scam the Healthcare System Truly Is. Hospitals are By Far are the Worst fucking Offenders of them all I assure You.

To Recap I have Raged against How its utterly insane that People sign up for  Surgery or a Medical Procedure, have it done, and then wait to see what They Owe. Then when the fucking Bills come People just Shrug and Blindly pay them Without Question. Thats fucking Retarded. Before You get Your Car Repaired or Sign up for say Internet/cable Service You know Before hand what You’re going to be Charged, and What You will be receiving for said Payment. This is the way business is conducted unless You’re a Hospital in which case You do Your Damndest to Prevent Patients from being able to receive/View Their Itemized Bill.

Again People blindly Pay Medical Bills WHICH ARE NOT ITEMIZED and My Point is for the Massive Amount of Money involved wouldn’t You want to know what the fuck You paid for? If Your Mechanic or A/C Repair Guy  did a Job for You and then handed You a Bill that stated only “You Owe Me this Sum of Money.”  would You say Alrighty and fork over Your hard earned Cash No Questions asked? Without an Itemized Bill You’re allowing Whoever You’re dealing with to Exploit the shit out of the Situation by taking You for all Your fucking worth.

              

Now since the Dawn of Hospitals They have been seriously going out of Their way to give Patients the Royal Runaround Routine until You get Too Tired, To Exhausted, Too Pissed Off, or Plain just give the fuck up. The Question is Why? You paid a Handsome amount of Money so why would Hospitals make it insanely Difficult to get an itemized Copy of the Services You have Already fucking Paid For? The Reason is its No Secret that Hospital Charges are Outrageous, but They are so fucking Outrageous They don’t want You to Know How Much They Ripped You Off for. I think its safe to say Most of Us have seen one of the Countless Stories online posted by Patients chronicling and exposing Unbelievably Expensive Charges on Their Hospital Bill (Example: A Patient in NJ finally received his itemized Hospital Bill and saw They Changed Him $230 for a fucking 25 centToothbrush).

In the Age of the Internet Where Social Media is King making the Power of Word of Mouth even more Pivotal No One likes Bad Press. Especially Big Businesses who rely heavily on the Public for Their Income and let’s NOT FORGET Hospitals are BIG BUSINESSES Owned by LARGE CORPORATIONS. They damn well fucking Know if You see Your Itemized Bill then You’ll actually be able to see How Excessive and Greed Driven Their Charges really are. Their solution then is to give any Patient who requests an Itemized Bill the Run Around as Long as it takes for them to finally fuck off at last without EVER receiving the Itemized Bill. They Bounce You around from Department to Department, Tell You a  Supervisor will call You Back with Clarifications (Big Surprise They NEVER call You), They will Mail it to You (Again They hangup and Simply Don’t Mail a Damn fucking Thing. Basically if They can’t frustrate You into giving Up, They try and Placate the Shit Out of You knowing that They have Absolutely No fucking Intention of Actually Helping You. They Tell You what You want to hear, hang up, and immediately forget about You.

              

I’ve been locked in this Battle with My Local Hospital for and I kid You Not OVER A FUCKING YEAR trying relentlessly but in vain to get a fucking Itemized Copy of My Bill. I have been Run Around like a motherfucker, Bullshitted, Placated, Apologized to, and Assured I would in fact receive My Bill which for the Record was a BOLD FACED LIE. I made 7 requests to have My records mailed to me (Hospitals intentional do not use the Internet for Billing just everything fucking else but Conveniently for them Not Billing), and was told Numerous Times that a Supervisor would call me back in 10-14 fucking days. Thats right I had to wait 2 motherfucking weeks, and like I said earlier They never fucking called and never intended too.

The Only Other Option to receive a Bill is By Fax like its 1986 or some shit can You say Outdated Tech?!! I because its fucking 2020 do not own or have direct access to a Fax Machine (Honestly I was surprised They still made fucking Fax Machines since I figured No One Used Them Nowadays), but I refused to Give Up and Let These Greedy fucking Bastards Win by wearing Me Out into Submission. Usually the People You’re referred to in Your quest for an itemized Bill are in fact Suborn, Abrasive, Standoffish, Aggressive, and Down Right Total Assholes. This I’m sure is Part of the Hospital’s Ongoing Scam because who wants to deal with a total dick? No fucking One thats goddamn Who.

             

Today I hit the Preverbal One in a Million and had a Woman Who actually Attempted to Help Me though She couldn’t actually get Me My Bill. She said as I stated Earlier that Mailing Doesn’t Work and I told Her I was Well fucking aware and that the whole thing is a fucking Scam from the Get Go. She also Admitted Supervisors don’t do a goddamn thing as Far as Customer Service of Any Kind as they Spend Their Days Holed Up in their fucking Offices Cowering Behind Their fucking Desks like a Bunch of Bureaucratic Paper Pushing Sons of Bitches. She went on to inform Me if I wanted a chance in Hell of actually getting an Itemized Bill I’d have to use the Fax Option. I then informed Her I lack the Time Machine I’d need to travel back in time to 1986 to get a Fax Machine and transport it back 34 years into the fucking Present.

She said I could go to a Store like Office Max or fucking Staples OR I could go to the Physical Hospital Itself and use Their Fax Machine. I was confused by the Receiving a Fax of My Bill when if I am at the Hospital they have a fucking Billing Department and ask what the fuck that was about. Apparently the Actual Hospital’s Billing Department Doesn’t have My Bill an operate Billing Department in another fucking state are the ones who are in possession of My Bill. My Question then is what the fuck are the cocksuckers in the Hospital’s Billing Department do all fucking Day Long if They don’t seem to do any actual do anything Billing related?!

              

I told the Woman while I appreciated Her so called Help and Information pertaining to My Bill that I simply didn’t Trust a fucking word out of Anyone who Works Directly for or  a Third Party Employed by said Hospital fucking said. I went on to explain that I had a sneaking suspicion that if I went to a Store like Office Max then The Hospital would suddenly come up with a reason why they aren’t allowed to send faxes to Public Places of Business. That or if I went to Directly to the Hospital that They would either Tell Me No right Out or Worse Have ME wait for Someone who isn’t coming until I get tired of sitting in the lobby and go the fuck Home. At that Point We had reached an Impass since I still had No Personal Fax Machine, No Faith in the Hospital what so fucking ever, and She couldn’t send Me a copy of My bill without a Fax Number.

I then spent the next several minutes pacing like a Caged Animal on the Verge of a Psychotic Break and talked the situation over with My Awesome Wife. Luckily 2020 Technology it turns out provided a Back Door Option, as I should have Guessed. You see its 2020 so if You need a Fax Machine for some reason Theres an App for that and I downloaded it. After I installed it and it was up and running I called the Hospital back repeated My Ongoing request for an Itemized Bill, and That I had a Private Fax Number to send it to. The Second Lady I talked to tried to end the call by telling Me that She would put in a Mailing Request (Yeah My Ass) and I stopped Her in Her Tracks. I informed Her I had a Fax Number and would be using the Fax My Bill Option, but Not only that I wanted to be on the Phone as She Faxed it. I wasn’t about to have Them Yes ME to Death and Like the Phone Calls or Mail where They promise They’ll take care of it only then to play the “What do you mean You didn’t get it, We totally sent it.” run around bullshit. I wanted Confirmation that She faxed My Bill on the fucking Spot as I wasn’t about to give these slippery sacks of shit a chance to fuck me over again.

              

So after 15 Months I received My Copy of My Itemized Bill, mind You I haven’t looked at it yet as I’ve had enough Blood Pressure Aggravating shit for one fucking Day. I wouldn’t’ be surprised that there is a “Look at this Bullshit” post in the Immediate Future once I actually Lay Eyes on the Information.

Thanks for Reading,

 By Les Sober

Hospitals: PAY OR DIE.

In my various Medical past have long ranted, raged, rioted, and railed against the current American Medical Capitalist Shit Show singling out Doctors as the biggest offenders.

I was wrong. I admit it. I was wrong.

The Biggest offender in the Medical Game is actually HOSPITALS.

It comes down to the Lesser of 2 evils. The System or Cycle of Abuse’s structure remains the same. That is BOTH Doctors and Hospitals exploit the Health Insurance companies. While they do this their all thinking:

“Well it doesn’t hurt anyone and these are Billion Dollar Corporation’s Cash we’re taking.”

What the Doctor’s and Hospitals forgot that in return for their financial exploitation the Insurance Companies turned right around and took it out on the Customers.

The Insurance Companies:

They Raised Deductibles.

They Raised Their Rates of Service.

They flat out Denied People Coverage period.

They tried to fuck people over with bullshit like Pre Existing Conditions.

WORST of all the Health Insurance Companies started denying more and more and more claims leaving their customers high and dry.

The Hospitals started to Monetize EVERY FUCKING THING.

A Prime Example of this is: The average cost of a Hospital room is $1,000 to $1,200 a Day. Thats just for the room. It doesn’t include any and all actual Medical Care such as Blood Work, Meals, Medicines, Diagnostic Tests, Surgeries etc. Its LITERALLY FOR JUST BEING THERE.

That Makes Hospitals the World’s most Expensive and yet at the same time Totally Fucking Shitty Hotel.

Another example of Hospitals gross greed is my Medical Bill from my Hospital was 6 Fucking Figures, and even before I was discharged I had 2 fucking Women from the Billing Department in my room demanding to know how the Hospital was getting paid, and if we could come up with $15,ooo deposit by the end of the day (they showed up at 4:30 on a fucking Friday so talk about last fucking minute.) being the Money Hungry Whores.

The Hospital fucked up my admission paper work, and didn’t check off that I had Insurance. I can’t actually blame them I was a fucking horror show by the time I arrived at the Hospital. Not to mention They showed up at 4:30 on a fucking Friday the stupid twats so talk about last fucking minute.

Just My shitty luck I had the pleasure of have yet a second fucking surgery this year (FUCK 2018!) and had a very unusual new experience.

This is how it all went down. The Hospital told me on the day I scheduled the Procedure that as part of Their customer service I would receive a phone call from them. The point of the phone call I was initially told was to expedite the tedious admission process (this was ironically to help ease the patients possible stress/fear/anxiety about the upcoming Surgery.

I received the aforementioned pre admission check in phone call at 9:00 am THE DAY BEFORE THE PROCEDURE. (you’ll see why thats key as well as I said ironic here in a minute)

The pleasant Woman on the phone introduced herself and we started the process as it were. She asked me My Name, Address, and if I had Insurance. That was it.

Usually they also ask shit like “Are you Allergic to any Medications?” and “Do You Take Any Medication Currently?”, “IS there a history of some particular disease (like cancer or diabetes etc.) run in your family”, “Have you been Hospitalized in the last 5 years?” and all that pertinent medical shit.

Right then I had a feeling things were about to get real fucked up and fast. This obviously was some sort of fucking ruse. This wasn’t some sort of Curtesy this was a New Beast all together.

The Woman told me (that the Hospital) had already whipped up an approximate bill, and that the cost would be $28,029.63 which seems pretty fucking on point for a fucking estimate. She then immediately wanted to know how I planned to pay.

As soon as I said that yes I did in fact have Insurance that when things became blatantly obvious. She then asked What Company and then asked for My Policy Number.

After that She asked Me to please hold on a second. Apparently the Hospital has some fucking Software or fucking Alga Rhythm that She ran the Estimated Bill to hypothetical see how much My Insurance would approximately cover.

She then informed me I had “Out of Pocket Expenses” to the tune of $2,500, and could I possibly pay it in full right then and there. I was quite pissed off.

I told this Woman that I scheduled the Procedure 6 goddamn weeks ago, and they decide to call me the DAY BEFORE THE SURGERY, and harass the the holy hell out of me for as much money as fucking humanly possible. Surprisingly the Woman acted the Bitch and din’t even acknowledge my previous statement.

I told her I wasn’t going to give them a fucking dime, and I did’t appreciate the greedy bastards demanding money BEFORE DOING A DAMN THING. I informed her I was going to contact My insurance company as soon as I hung up with her which I promptly did.

I called My Insurance Company and explained what the hell had just happened. I told the Customer Representative I was confused. She told me she had never heard of such a phone call before (and she has been working in the Health Insurance Field for 26 fucking years)

She went on to explain that the Hospital can’t bill me for shit since they hadn’t submitted an itemized bill to them. I reminded her that the Woman I spoke with acted like if I busted out My Credit Card she would have gladly taken the payment on the spot. To which the Insurance Lady said that it sounded like they calculated what I might owe due to Out of Pocket Expenses. Which Ironically I was informed was $1,300 which is $1,200 LESS THAN THE HOSPITAL WOMAN TRIED TO BILL ME FORM/COLLECT.

I then inquired to what the fuck Out of Pocket expenses were since I was a customer of theirs and had met My Deductible many, many months ago. I was then educated a bit more in the corrupt World of Health Insurance Companies.

Even though I had indeed met My normal deductible the Insurance Company had My Second Surgery categorized in such a way that I had this “Out of Pocket” bullshit or in reality it was a second and separate Deductible. Health Insurance Companies are a fucking Scam run by Greedy fucking Big Businesses that are People for Profit.

So in conclusion in spite of their Sunny Advertisements or in Hospital Poster Propaganda (with Happy Babies, Smiling Senior Citizens, Confident Doctors and al the usual Hospital hype) absolutely and totally

DON’T GIVE A FLYING FUCK ABOUT PATIENTS. They are SOLEY FOR PROFIT BIG BUSINESSES.

When It Comes to Modern Medicine its simple PAY OR SUFFER/DIE.

Thanks for Reading,   By Les Sober