That little "procedure" difficult child 1 had?

gcvmom

Here we go again!
About 1/2 was instantly discounted because of the contracted rate with our insurance company. I imagine we'll have to pay 10-20% of that amount. The EOB hasn't been processed yet.
 

susiestar

Roll With It
MEdical care sure isn't cheap, is it? It really bugs me to see the price and then see them cut so much for insurance contracted rates. I know why it happens, but it sure seems to me that there is no equality or fairness in pricing for healthcare. Those with-o insurance cannot get those lower rates and often either go bankrupt or spend their lives paying for medical care.

I AM glad your insurance is going to pay most of it. Do you think that difficult child should have to work off part of whta you have to pay as a way to help him learn to not do things like this and to not hide them for so long? I am sure that having it in there for so long cost you a whole bundle of money in health care costs for him. I don't know if having him pay any of it off would help or not, but it is an itneresting question to think about.
 

slsh

member since 1999
This is the kind of stuff that really irks me. Thank goodness for insurance, but I cannot help but pity the folks who are uninsured. I think the costs are jacked up so that hospitals can stay afloat when they give these ridiculous negotiated rates to insurance companies. The people who can least afford to pay are the ones who pay the most.

I just got an EOB for Boo's g-tubes (actual device in his stomach he's fed thru). The "price" for each one is over a grand. Negotiated rate? $50. What's really insane is if I were uninsured, they'd still charge me a grand - but I can order the exact same thing off Amazon for $180. It's all funny money.
 

Marguerite

Active Member
It's going into tricky ground, billing the kid for the medical bills for something idiotic he did. We had a not-so-nasty but similar incident with easy child 2/difficult child 2 - she was about 5 or 6 years old and had blocked ears. The doctor looked down her tiny ear canals, said he could see ear wax build up. They tried gently syringing, but no luck. The doctor didn't want to syringe too hard because she was so little. So we were given ear drops to soften the wax. Two weeks later after daily ear drops, we were back. The doctor tried syringing again. No luck. More weeks. More ear drops.

Finally we took her to a different GP, one who was more experienced. "Definitely ear wax," he said. "It's typical in colour. But I think I can see a tiny chink I can aim for with the jet of water; it takes courage but I've done this before."

He aimed, he succeeded - and exclaimed in shock - in the kidney bowl was some ear wax, but also one earwax-stained propelling pencil eraser! So when he syringed the other ear, he was not so surprised to find one there, too. Both erasers had been there long enough to take on the colour of the ear wax, so from the otoscope point of view, it looked like ear wax build up. But no amount of ear drops would have softened those erasers!

The thing is - when confronted with it, easy child 2/difficult child 2 could not remember how on earth those erasers got in her ears. She said she knew better than to put stuff in her ears, she was not a baby, she was FIVE, for pete's sake... {can anyone say, "Aspie!"?). To this day she cannot explain how the erasers got there.

If I had billed her for it all, she would object loudly because she really does not remember doing anything.

My theory - I think one afternoon at school, while bored, she got two propelling pencils and stuck them in her ears, tip outwards, and paraded around saying, "I'm an alien." and when she pulled them out, the erasers stayed behind...

Mind you, that is one possible explanation. But I cannot think of how a length of electrical wiring could have ended up inside someone's bladder, without them actively and meticulously feeding it up there... I mean, he can't claim he fell over into a box of electrical supplies!

Marg
 

Marcie Mac

Just Plain Ole Tired
Danny went into the ER a while back doubled up in pain - spent almost 4 hours there in a bed - hooked him up to a saline IV, they gave him a scan and said they "think" he was passing a kidney stone, wasn't sure because they couldn't see anything. Gave him a pain shot. The bill was a little over $17,000. And he doesn't have insurance. Just outrageous.

Marcie
 

donna723

Well-Known Member
Marg, don't feel bad! When my daughter was little we went to dinner at my brother in laws house and I caught her stuffing both of her ears with baked beans! They just fit in there and she had both ears stuffed full of them before I could stop her! She had ear problems anyway and already went to an ear, nose and throat specialist so I had to call them and take her in to the office the next day. He used a water picture type thing to wash all the beans out of her ears but it wasn't easy because they had already started to dry up in there. The doctor actually got a good laugh out of it. He said he had removed all kinds of things from kids' ears over the years but Allison was the first one that had ever filled their ears with baked beans!
 

gcvmom

Here we go again!
Oh, he's been through enough I think. Over at least a 2-year period, he's endured pain, humiliation, tedium of countless doctor visits, inconvenience of countless other remedies (special diets, enemas, laxatives, stool softeners, suppositories, increased fiber, an assortment of rx's) in an attempt to treat the other symptoms caused by this problem and that fooled us into thinking it was a completely different problem. He missed out on sleep, school, friends, sports, and family outings. Lived a life of chronic fatigue, pain and isloation and spent countless hours on the toilet in misery. Harbored the paralyzing fear of knowing something wasn't right because of blood in his urine and couldn't ask for specific help. There's no need to rub it in further by charging money him for this too. He did it to himself during an extremely chaotic time in our family as a maladaptive means of coping with everything that was going on: a Crohn's diagnosis for himself, starting middle school, his dad's brain surgery, problems in our marriage, his brother being diagnosis'd with bipolar... umm, yup, there was a lot going on then.
 
When difficult child put his foot through the window, I charged him what the replacement glass would cost, but not the ER costs. He was 9, but I figured he understood the window costs but wouldn't really get the ER stuff, esp when you get a bill for the ER, a bill for the doctor, a bill for the X-ray ....
 

flutterby

Fly away!
Yeah, I agree, he's been through enough. I feel bad for him, but those medical bills hit hard. Is he feeling better?

My heart attack: hospital bill was $197,000 and that didn't count the cardiologist's fee or ambulance. Thank God I had insurance. I think insurance paid around $130,000 for the hospital. I can't remember what my portion was.

Marcie, I can't believe $17,000 for that ER bill. When I had my first kidney infection and didn't know what it was, so I didn't go to the ER until I was really sick and it had almost gone septic...they had me on fluids, ran antibiotics through the IV, plus nausea medications, plus the tests they ran and it was only $1,500. Of course, this was 14 years ago so think about how much health care costs have gone up. Outrageous. I didn't have health insurance then, which is why I refused to be admitted.
 

susiestar

Roll With It
That makes sense. With Wiz it became an issue because he wanted to go to the psychiatric hospital for a "vacation" - conned us into it once and later we learned that it was just to meet up with a girl that he had met when he was in because he was dangerous. I made him work off part of the copay because it was not a needed medical service. I also told him he would have to pay the copays if he had to go to the hospital or ER because he was eating rotten meat. he would take an entire pound or two of frozen cooked beef from the fridge and keep it in his room to eat off of for 5 or 6 days and then be horribly, terribly sick with food poisoning. we did NOT ration food and there was PLENTY of food in the kitchen but we insisted he eat veggies and fruits and not just eat meat. At the time he wanted to eat ONLY protein and sugar. Meat and cheese by the pound and then either lots of cake/cookies/ice cream or sugar straight from the pantry. When we insisted that he had to eat fruits and veggies and whole grain bread and stopped keeping the cake/cookies and put the sugar up in a locked drawer he started taking meat from the freezer. The first three times we thought being sick was enough punishment, but he didn't stop. He didn't even keep it for a shorter period of time because he wanted to "punish" us by not letting us have meat. The boy was getting huge portions of meat at every meal (10-12 oz or more per meal) and there were meats and cheeses for snacks in the fridge, but we wanted him to eat other foods too. So we finally told him he would have to pay the $100 copay for the ER/hospital if we felt he had to go because food poisoning.

The decision was NOT left up to him because he would have refused to go, but he was scaring us badly with this. I told him to start saving because he would have to hand it over when he got there and if he didn't have the $ to hand over he better stay out of the freezer. It worked - he did stop, but not with-o many tantrums when we would tell him to get out of the freezer area as we found him heading to it.

I sure hope getting this thing out will be enough relief that he remembers not to ever try something like that again. I also hope it clears up a lot of his problems. If so, that huge price is a bargain!
 

gcvmom

Here we go again!
He feels soooo much better now compared to just a few weeks ago. He sleeps better, he has more energy, better appetite, better mood -- all of it. I ran into the school health clerk at the grocery store yesterday and she was SO happy to tell me how much healthier he looks now. She commented that his color is good, he seems more relaxed, is more cheerful, etc. :bigsmile:
 
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