HOSPITAL BILL FROM HELL

Okay. To save time and space on this blog entry. I am going to tell you a readers digest version of what happened.

On 10/10/08 I woke up at 4:30am. Half my body had no feeling. The right side of my entire body had no feeling, whatsoever. It only lasted 20 minutes, but I went to the ER anyway just to be safe.

The ER spent 4 hours running tests and taking blood and they still didn't know why this happened to me. Great!! Now I am getting frustrated and want to go home.

They then try to give me two pills. One pill for my high blood pressure (I don't have high blood pressure. It was high because I was angry at the hospital's dragging feet on my diagnosis) and one pill for my stomach so it doesn't get upset over the blood pressure pill. As you can guess, I didn't take either.

They tell me that they are going to run 3 more tests today and they are going to admit me into the hospital. They also said that they will be moving me to a holding area until they can find me a bed. I might be there for a few hours until a bed opens up.

So they finally get me into a room around 4pm. I don't want to spend the night. That would mean being woken up every 3 hours to give blood, which by the way was not going to happen even if I did spend the night.

So I asked my doctors to review the tests before they went home for the day. I was hoping that I could possibly be released before the left the hospital. This way I could sleep in my own bed.

Thankfully everything checked out good and they released me that night around 6:30pm.

So here is the part that BUGS me. I get an ER bill for $100 from Los Alamitos Medical Center. My insurance states that if I go to ER I have to pay $100 dollars. But my insurance also says that if they admit me into the hospital that I don't have to pay anything.

So I tell them to remove the charge. They tell me three things to avoid admitting that they admitted me.
1. We didn't admit you.
2. We admitted you only for observation
3. You weren't there more than 24 hours

The beauty of this is that the more I fight this bill the more the reason for the charge changes. I don't care if it was less that 24 hours, only for observation or if the moon was blue that night. My insurance states if I am admitted then I don't pay.

As for good old Pacificare, they are useless in this situation. They are not even standing up for me. All they said was, "We paid our $20,000 already for your visit. Our part is done."

And Los Alamitos is still sticking to the three poor excuses above. So I must take matters into my own hands.

Two days ago I called Rene in the Administration office 714.826.6400 and basically told her to stop running this scam on people. I told her to fix the bill. I told her that if I was a millionaire and I was on my death bed, I still would not pay this bill of $100. She acted like she understood my frustration and said she knew what to do and would get back to me.

WELL SHE DIDN'T UNDERSTAND ME. INSTEAD SHE HAD SOMEONE CALL ME TO CONTINUE TO FEED ME A LINE OF BAD EXPLANATIONS ON WHY I HAVE TO PAY. BY THE WAY, DID I MENTION THAT I STILL AM NOT PAYING THE BILL.

UPDATE 1/27/09

So I called Rene back and told her my problem hasn't gone away. She said that she would talk to someone and get back to me in a little while. As you can guess she never called back.

UPDATE 1/28/09

Hi, Rene. How come you NEVER called me back. She fed me this line of, "Oh, I was waiting for a return called from the CFO who I left a note for." Yeah, right!

UPDATE 1/29/09

Today I am beginning my life long relationship with Rene. I will call her every day for the rest of my life until she writes off the $100. I may even feel the love to call her twice or three times a day. When springtime gets here, my love may increase to every hour of the day. I sure hope she wants a new friend, because she just got one.

I will give you more updates on this hospital bill from hell as is develops.

UPDATE 1/29/09 part 2

I just called Rene. We are now old friends. I made her aware that I am blogging on this. She kind of laughed and asked me not to blog on this. I told her that about 1000 people are following this on my blog and can't wait to see how this turns out.

Rene said that the person I need to speak with is CFO David Vickers. He has yet to answer Rene on my situation so I left him a voice mail just now. Let's see how long it takes for David to call me back.

If you'd like to help me out, please call David Vickers at 714.826.6400 / hit 0 for the operator and ask for David Vickers office. If he's not there please leave a message asking him to fix my $100 bill and that I should not be paying for it. Thank you.

UPDATE: 1/30/09

I finally got a hold of David Vickers. He still states that it's not an admittance to the hospital and there is nothing he can do. He said he has the explanation from Pacificare that shows that if it's just for observation then the $100 is my responsibility.

I have seen the paperwork and there is no part that I have seen that says that. So I asked David to provide a copy of what he saw. Well, here replied to me that they were unable to obtain this because they are not the insured.

WOW. I am back to square one.

The doctor wrote out patient ER visit on the paperwork.
Los Alamitos says that they are not associated with the doctors and so they can't so anything about what the dr. wrote.
Pacificare won't pay the $100 because they say the paperwork says "outpatient ER visit".

So my next step is the Dr. I can't believe this. I AM NOT PAYING THIS BILL!!!!

UPDATE 2/7/09

Since Pacificare isn't going to do anything because the hospital lied and put down outpatient, and since The hospital isn't going to change their wording, I filed a formal complaint with my insurance and I filed for an appeal. I explained that the hospital is lying and I want an investigation. This will take 30 days. I will update you all once I have an answer. If that doesn't work and I still have to pay it, I am going to ...... NOT PAY!!!

UPDATE 3/15/09

Okay. My own friggen insurance wouldn't help me fight this. I am so glad I will be leaving Pacificare soon. They should change their name to Wedon'tcare. I consulted with my lawyer and he just laughed. He said, "Jack. I am glad you have that much fight in you and I appreciate you standing up for what is right. Now pay the damn bill!" So I did.

When your lawyer won't even charge you, you know it's a lost cause. I live to fight another fight!

BANK BAILOUTS WILL COST US PLENTY

I just received an email from Representative Ed Royce of Orange County.

Listen to what he is telling me. There is a bill before congress that will bail out the banks to prevent them from going under. First the banks get to rake in the bucks on tons of loans and then they get to dump their bad loans on the American people? I don't think so.

Here is how Mr. Royce puts it (btw, he is voting against the bill):

The bill included a $300 billion plan which would allow banks to dump their least appealing loans onto the Federal Housing Administration. By taking on these mortgages, we are shifting that default risk, currently held by institutions and investors around the world, onto the backs of the American taxpayers. Perhaps less obvious than the $300 billion bailout, but in many respects more egregious, is an affordable housing fund which would funnel as much as $600 million every year to activist organizations with long histories of both voter fraud and anti-free market advocacy throughout the country.

300 Billion dollars? Who's got that? Not America. We loaned all our money to other countries. Whatever money we have left is used to keep the lights on in Iraq for our troops.

I understand that the economy would be devastated and we could have another depression if the big three banks went under. I wouldn't even mind helping them out in some capacity, but first they should start by cutting into the millions that the CEOs are getting. You know those salaries won't be touched.

Now as you guys know from my past blog I have pulled all my savings out of the bank. I have it in an off site secure location just until this stuff blows over. And all my money is going strait in my gas tank. I have no more to give. So if a bank gets to reap the rewards of profit they should also pay the penalty of bad business decisions.