Health Insurance Quagmire

[oldhat]

Single payer.

[Ultralight]

Single payer.

Amen to that!

[Williamsmith]

I wish I could believe in single payer but my cynical self believes in greed in all systems so that somewhere somehow....the little guy will always get screwed. But hey, at least it will be in a different orifice.

[freshstart]

The most common scenario like this I've heard about are patients having surgery and their surgeon is in network, but the anesthesiologist isn't. I wish I could offer more than just agreeing with you that it sucks.

this happened to my patients over and over, it's disgusting. The only time this didn't happen to me was when I had an EPO, I could only use services the hospital system I worked for provided. Out of network pay was zero, so you tripled checked everything to make sure the services were all covered by the hospital plan and you were set. I paid so little for what I thought was top notch care. Until I got sick, then sicker and multiple tests could not be done because my hospital simply did not do them, I could not go to the best specialists in the area that were recommended. Amazingly, Cobra let me switch to the PPO in open enrollment for $20 more, if I had switched to the PPO while working it would've cost me $200 more a month. So this is a huge gift. Even though I cannot get anyone to issue me the new PPO card, I've called every single week. They say it's the same number but I don't want to take the chance handing docs the EPO card that I still have and getting bills. Insurance is such a cluster****.

[freshstart]

what are the odds of this? I just finished typing and received a call from my insurer is mailing the new card today.

I am all for single payer