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!

AUTOMAKER BAILOUT WON'T HELP

let me get this straight:

1. The Democrats wanted the bailout
2. The Republicans stopped the bailout
3. The Republican President Bush gives the automakers a bailout
4. The Democrats accuse Bush of using this scenario to better himself.

Now I am not exactly sure when Bush stopped being a Republican and stopped being President. I am not even sure which happened first. I am sure that this was the worst mistake ever.

This shows you just how powerful organized crime ....... ERRRRRR... unions really are. They strong armed the gov't into given them money. The thought that they were big enough to affect the economy if they went under so why not use that to get some money.

I don't see how $13 billion will save them. It's still the same over paid under educated union workers running the show. All this will do is prolong the pain.

Now think about this. What smart American will buy an American car. We know they aren't doing well. So why risk buying a car from a company that might go under. Too big of a risk.

The automakers are still destined for the grave. No one is going to buy from them. It's like buying from Kmart. You know they are a dying company. So you stay away. Same thing will happen here.

Did you know that $10,000 from every car sold goes to the retirees of the auto union? Did you know that $2 billion a month goes to the retirees? Do you have any idea what a high school drop out's starting salary is working for the automakers? It's $28 an hour according to USA Today.

I go on record saying that I will never buy a Chrysler, Ford, or GM product again.

I TRIED. I REALLY TRIED!!!

I have been told that I am too negative. I have been told that this blog isn't the most positive blog and doesn't help me in any way. I even tried to stay away from this blog and stop complaining so much in my life.

Then it came in the mail. I have a notice that was delivered in the mail that basically says: "If at any time in the future a dog is seen unconfined in your neighborhood, your mail delivery service will be suspended." So if my mailman sees a stray dog, I stop getting mail.

Here come the capital letters now. ARE YOU FREAKIN' KIDDING ME!!!!

It's bad enough that paying postage on your package doesn't ensure that your mail will ever be delivered. To ensure that your mail gets delivered, you have to insure it.

Now, I may not get mail delivered to my house because some stray dog is crossing the street. Somehow that's my fault. Somehow not bringing me mail will make stray dogs go away.

Soon I will have to go to the post office and sort out my mail from the rest of the neighborhood.

Don't the mailmen have mace? Bring a gun. Shoot the dog. I don't care as long as you bring my mail.

I swear, if my mail stops I will be shooting dogs left and right, unconfined, confined, hot dogs. I don't care. I will be blowing everything away.

Honestly, I don't think I could ever kill a dog, but I am angry and my mouth gets the best of me. I am so glad I didn't get rid of this blog.

BACK ON TRACK

I feel like I have been gone a long time.

Most of you know that I have four blogs:

All that bugs blog
Blog and Cookies
Cooking With Jack
Need Prayer Now

I have been so distracted by my other jobs that I haven't kept up on the blogs too much. I have just finished producing a movie, filming cooking videos, trying to set up my church to broadcast live on the internet, and been on Twitter like a crazy man.

BTW, my twitter id is jakatak4 if you want to follow me. I will in turn follow you, too.

I have also had time to re-evaluate my blogs and decide if they are all needed. I have decided to keep them all. YEAH!!!!

Okay now let me bring you up to date on what I plan to do with each one.

All that bugs blog: not a healthy blog since I am trying to stop complaining as much. I will still keep it up there so I can inform people about things that bug me. I will just be more selective, like for example, did you know if you have a mattress from Sit n' Sleep here in LA and you somehow (don't ask me how) get a stain on the mattress, your warranty is no longer good. These are the type of complaints I want to do. Not as often, but much healthier complaining.

Blog and Cookies: This blog is about info that you need to know about that is positive. Like Pownce getting taken over by Six Apart. I am not complaining, but it's a hot topic.

Cooking with Jack: This blog will have more cooking tips. I will be producing a cooking video each week and posting it up there. I will give great tip like: before refrigerating your package of bacon, be sure to roll it up and put a rubber band around it. This way when you unroll it to cook it, each slice will be separate from the rest. It helps separate the bacon so you don't tear each piece.

Need Prayer Now: This blog is going to stay up for anyone who needs a pray. I also will be giving some insight to my thoughts about my faith and things I learn during my spiritual growth. Things like: did you know that "knowledge" is what you know and "wisdom" is how you use how you use what you know.

All my blogs will be shorter and to the point. Sometimes I ramble on and on and on and ..... well, you get it.

I am glad to be back. It's hard keeping up with your family life, work life, Twitter, facebook, emails, texts, etc. Feel free to subscribe to my newsletter in the upper right corner of this page.

Take care and we will be taking soon.

THE END OF NEWSPAPERS AS WE KNOW IT

My local paper is the Orange County Register in Southern California. I am sure it's pretty comparable to any hometown fish wrap.

Every morning when the newspaper hits my doorstep it is full of news that everyone already knows about. In fact, the news in the OC Register is as much as 24 hours old. News information that we read the night before immediately on the internet or that was SMS'd to my iPhone the second it happened.

How the OC Register stays in business is anyone's guess. They print on paper which is wasteful, their news is outdated, and their articles are grossly exaggerated if not completely incorrect.

Let's take this last Sunday's paper (10/12/09) for example. On the front page of the "Local" section of the OC Register there was an article titled:

SWAP MEET CROWDS THIN

It's an article stating that the Orange County Market Place in Costa Mesa is hurting do to the bad economy. I admit that the economy has affected all areas of the world, but this article is grossly exaggerated. Everyone knows the best deals are at the swap meets and when times are tough people head out there to save their hard earned dollars.

So the OC Register prints a picture of a kid at a produce stand selling avocados. In this photo, they try to make it look like the produce stand has no customers.

First of all, if you knew anything about this produce stand, you would know that the kid in the picture only comes to the produce stand during the last hour of the day right before closing. He bargains the last few produce items before they close up for the day. To make their story look legit, the OC Register takes a picture at closing time. Nice job guys. That's top notch reporting.

Here are pictures near that same produce stand the next day when this particular article came out. Yeah. This place looks like a ghost town. NOT!



To really pour on the lies, the OC Register interviews one of the vendor at the Orange County Market Place. The vendor they strategically choose to interview sells beaded furniture covers. Yes! You heard me; beaded furniture covers. NO WONDER SALES ARE HORRIBLE. NO ONE USES BEADED FURNITURE COVERS. I can't even imagine buying beaded furniture covers as a gift. I don't think I hate anyone that much.

Wonder why they didn't interview Papa Dan's Beef jerky, or "The Best Barbeque Sauce You'll Ever Taste?" I will tell you why. Because they are still doing good sales and that would have ruined this horrific newspaper article.

Thank God for the internet. It gives real honest people a change to speak out on companies like the OC Register and prove them wrong. It let's us shine the light on the cock roaches of the world and watch them scatter.

I subscribe only to the OC Register Sunday edition. I do this so my wife can have the Sunday ads. The OC Register is hurting so bad, they called me recently to offer me the rest of the week for FREE!!!! Wow. That's embarrassing. I would have at least asked for a penny.

The writing is on the wall so let me give a tip to the OC Register. Stop writing lies. Stop wasting trees. Shut your doors with dignity while you can.

If you'd like to express your concerns for this article not being true to form please contact the writer of the article: 714.445.6604 or at epak@ocregister.com