More BS

So today I have completely lost my faith in our government's ability to administer anything and by belief that doctors really mean it when they take an oath to do no harm.

Here's my experience with the CHIP issue today:

I started by calling the state human services people. After 30 minutes of refining the random info they could access I finally pieced together the fragments of Fall 2009:

1) CHIP began coverage through Superior on July 1, 2009.

2) Medicaid took it upon itself to "update" our address to our previous home on August 28, 2009. The CHIP rep could give no reason as to why Medicaid would "update" our address.

3) Since we were "living" outside Superior's coverage area we needed a different provider, and get this -> since all mail to our "new" address was returned a health plan was chosen for us. Notice any problems here? Anyway Superior ends September 30, 2009 & Seton begins October 1, 2009.

4) Since all mail is getting returned CHIP changes our address back to the "old" address - the correct one - and reprints/mails one solitary notice, mentioning how the state has decided to do whatever it wants without our consent or making us aware (paraphrased liberally). Additionally Seton is to mail us an ID card. This letter is dated October 1, 2009, and we didn't keep the envelope to verify the postmark. Two problems here: ID cards are sent to wrong address (and returned obviously), and now we're once again living outside of our provider's coverage area.

5) Sam gets sick,and on October 17, 2009 she spikes a 106 degree fever, resulting in a trip to the ER. We give the hospital her Superior ID card because that's what we have and what we think we have.

6) We get Sam's new ID card from Superior. You see CHIP changed us back without notice again after they "updated" our address.

7) We get a letter from the hospital about the claim being denied. Tiff pulls out the new ID card from Superior to update the account info.

8) We get another letter from the hospital about the claim - we make sure the info is correct again.

9) Time goes by. Then we get this letter from the collections agency demanding $467. I tell them I need to find out what's going on and call CHIP. About five hours later (five hours over three days) I've put together all the above.

10) By the way, the collections agency wants money for "physician services." All that talk with the hospital - yeah, different bill. Not only is it a different bill, but it's a bill we haven't even seen yet. We've been calling the hospital about a bill that's coming from a third party,and no one has caught on. I specifically asked the lady at the hospital if we were talking about the bill for $467 (that specific amount), and she said yes. What she should have said was, "No. The amount of your hospital bill is $1,004." Then I would have said to myself, "WTF!?! Something is amiss."

What's worse is we're being charged ~$1,500 total for a Nurse Practitioner to misdiagnose our daughter with the flu "by the look of her eyes" - she had an ear infection as correctly diagnosed by her pediatrician a week later. It seems to me if taxes are raised to support universal healthcare it's because of the greedy bastard hospitals like Memorial Hermann in Katy, TX...$1,500 for a pseudo-doctor to look at my daughter's eyes and request an xray. Do no harm? What a joke, if energy companies were raping people like Memorial Hermann is it would be all over the news like Enron. But the medical industry? No, medicine is for good....

Right now the bitterness is too great, so I'll have to finish this later.