Saturday, April 18, 2009

Health Care 2009


Gregarious Son does not have a job with benefits, and so we help him out with catastrophic health insurance coverage. There was a time when that seemed like a precarious situation, but in the past few years I have become more jaded, with the result that I was able to say calmly in December that if the Lovely Daughter did indeed need eye surgery we had better get it done, because her college graduation will be accompanied by the termination of her health insurance.


The bill for her surgery has arrived. Now I'm not complaining, because she received excellent care at Giant Famous Hospital from a terrific doctor, and most of it is covered by the Quiet Husband's excellent insurance plan. And I am grateful that we were actually at the hospital for only three hours, and even more grateful that her vision is considerably improved and her spinal problems apparently eliminated, both by a relatively simple procedure from which no complications ensued. But, well, you know . . .


$14,000???????

7 comments:

Joan Calvin said...

Pretty awful. I had catastrophic insurance between seminary and my first call. I can't tell you how grateful I am that if I were going to have cancer, it came after I had great insurance (well, good insurance).

Magdalene6127 said...

I was stunned to find my out of pocket for my gall bladder surgery in October (with PCUSA coverage through the Board of Pensions) was in excess of $6000.

The system is broken.

Kathryn J said...

Yes - my new hips were over $20K each. Thankfully, we had decent insurance back then.

Even though dh works for large well known corporation the benefits are terrible now. If anybody gets sick, we will quickly spend $8000 out of pocket.

I agree with Magdalene6127 - the system is broken.

Mike Farley said...

Eeek!

Lest we in the UK forget to be grateful for the NHS, or resent our National Insurance payments...

Carol said...

Ridiculous. I am always appalled when I see how much of the bill gets written off by the hospital/doc because of negotiated rates with the insurance company. Those without insurance pay so much more. The system most definitely needs fixing.

Michelle said...

yikes! But in line with the bill for my surgery last fall....

Stratoz said...

glad we never had to see how our catastrophic insurance worked... I can't read about health insurance without thinking it is why I am a married man.