January 26, 2009

Surgery Unscheduled?

I am so tired and angry from dealing with the ongoing battle with insurance. I was finally given a subscriber number today, and immediately called neurosurgery so that they could get an authorization number for the scans that were scheduled for tomorrow, and the surgery on Thursday. This evening neurosurgery called me back with the news that Children's hospital is not covered under our new insurance. I had specifically looked up Children's hospital to make sure that they were a provider under this insurance plan, and they were. It turns out that, in turning our paperwork in (the original problem was that someone at the UC didn't do their job and submit the paperwork), we were assigned an arbritrary medical plan group. One that we did not choose, and one that does not cover Children's hospital. The surgery and tommorow's procedures had to be canceled. I am so angry with the bullshit bureaucracy, and people not doing their job. It does not need to be this difficult. It is hard enough as it is.

I called the insurance and after crying on the phone to them they will be able to change us to the correct group and even add our current pediatrician as the new primary care physician. I have no idea if this means that we can procede with all of our appointments tomorrow or not. At this point I don't even think that we can go to our routine clinic appointment, because it may not be covered. The crazy thing is, because we have CCS (a secondary insurance specifically for California children with life-threatening conditions) if we didn't have insurance at all, we would be totally covered by CCS and everything could proceed as planned. Since we do have primary coverage, CCS won't pay anything until the primary pays for something, and they won't because it's not under their stupid plan.

I'm ready to stick sharp things in my eyes. Dealing with this is making me crazy.

The good news is that this surgery is not an emergency, and it won't affect Madeleine at all to have it delayed by a week or two. It is just so frustrating.

5 comments:

Jenny said...

I can't imagine what you are going through, just reading about it stresses me out! I guess the bright side is you found out beforehand, instead of having the surgery and then finding out it wasn't covered! Hopefully it will all get straightened out and be back on track in no time, in the meantime stay strong!

Danelle said...

wow, I am so sorry :( I can't even imagine having to go though that (I think I might have had to kill someone). Please let us know if there is anything we can do, like give you and Ryan a date night :)

jocelyn said...

I'm so sorry! That really,really sucks.

Unknown said...

Everyone involved in this insurance debacle, including the UC, should be ASHAMED. What a bunch of freaking, ridiculous nonsense. I'm so sorry you're dealing with this on top of everything else.

Akul's mama said...

It is so hard to deal with all his paperwork stuff when you are traumatized by your child's illness. I hated sorting out the numerous bills after our son passed away.