A quick count shows me that of the last dozen posts, ten have been at least partially about the new house. Well. It’s understandable. Which doesn’t mean it’s not a little boring.
So today I will talk about the OLD house. Ha ha! A little joke there. Except I really am going to go on to say something about our old/current house, which is that the bathroom fan stopped working, and then the dishwasher started making a weird buzzing noise, and then the box fan we were using as a stand-in for the bathroom fan ALSO broke, and then the kitchen sink started dripping, and now the OTHER bathroom fan is getting loud, and what in tarnation is going on here? Does the old house know we’re leaving? Is there a house ghost, and is it displeased? Listen, you can come with us to the new house, house ghost. In fact, we’d love it if you would. Please let us know your transportation container of choice. My first thought was cat carrier, but that seems a little too well-ventilated for someone of a vaporeal nature. Mason jar? Those are very hip right now, and nicely sealed.
Today’s plan is nothing to look forward to: grocery shopping, dentist appointment, and three phone calls to health insurance and doctors’ offices to straighten out several issues. We have new health insurance because we always seem to have new health insurance. We currently pay twice as much per month for our health insurance as we paid for our two-bedroom two-bathroom apartment (with balcony, and walk-in closet, and free cable, and access to pool and exercise center; safe quiet neighborhood but easy walking distance to grocery store, drug store, pizza place, frozen-yogurt place, video rental store, Subway, Goodwill, and bus stop) (why oh why did we ever leave) back when Rob was born. I know better than to compare old money to new money, but it seems to happen automatically as I age. And anyway I just used an inflation calculator, and putting everything in 2018 dollars we are paying approximately two hundred 2018 dollars more per month for our current health insurance than we paid for that apartment.
Anyway, our current policy is a nice one, as it jolly well should be for this price, and the customer service representatives are just lovely: so friendly and helpful and so good at fixing things. And the reason I know they are so lovely and so good at fixing things is that I already have extensive experience calling them and asking them to fix things. More than once a month, I get an explanation of benefits in which our insurance company explains that we didn’t acquire the necessary referral, or else I get a bill from a doctor saying our insurance wouldn’t pay for something they absolutely ought to be paying for. Most recently, I got a bill saying we didn’t obtain a necessary referral—even though I had a carbon copy of that referral in my hand, AND when I called the billing-doctor’s office (thinking maybe they accidentally failed to submit it) they said they could see on their computer a scan of it submitted along with the claim, and also they had a confirmation number from the insurance company for the submission of that referral, and they were unable to take my suggested solution of “can it be resubmitted?” because the system will not let them re-submit a duplicate of something that has already been successfully received and confirmed by the insurance company. So I had to call the insurance company BACK and say the doctor says she can’t submit something she has already submitted, and would this confirmation number be useful? And OH, they were so friendly and helpful and they fixed it all up.
Today I have to call about a co-pay charged to me twice; a bill for the scoliosis brace that is almost exactly twice the amount they told us ahead of time it would be; and a check from the insurance company that arrived, apparently for us to use for the brace. (This has never happened before; the insurance has always paid the provider directly.) With the check is a form, and on the form there is the FAQ “Why am I receiving this?” The answer to this question is: “This is not a bill. If you owe money, your provider will bill you directly.” Good talk.
I want to believe in good. And I do believe there are good people. The commenters here support this belief. HOWEVER, insurance companies bring out the cynic in me. Oops, this paperwork got lost. Oops, you weren’t supposed to be billed for that because your policy covers it. Oops, there was a miscommunication. NOPE. Insurance is a business, and a pretty darn profitable one if you can take advantage of people who get confused by this stuff and pay their bills for them. It’s a horrible system.
Good for you for not letting the jerks take advantage of your family.
Sorry, not sorry enough to not post. Somebody’s got a case of the Mondays….
I got a check about a year ago for three therapy sessions when normally my insurance company pays my therapist directly. I felt pretty weird about it, but I cashed the check and then wrote my therapist a personal check to cover the sessions. I still have no idea why it happened that way, but my insurance has since gone back to paying her directly.
My insurance also has the worst customer service. They’re usually very nice but also very useless and/or wrong. Once I was given incorrect information about whether a test would be covered (and not in the direction that favored me, of course!) and recently the most I could be told about which models of breast pump were covered is that I’m definitely allowed “one breast pump per pregnancy.” Great, super helpful.
The health insurance stuff makes me want to slam my head repeatedly into a wall while screaming.
Favorite bit: “Listen, you can come with us to the new house, house ghost. In fact, we’d love it if you would. Please let us know your transportation container of choice. My first thought was cat carrier, but that seems a little too well-ventilated for someone of a vaporeal nature. Mason jar? Those are very hip right now, and nicely sealed.”
I’m English. My husband is American. We live in the UK and what you’ve described is pretty much exactly why we think it’s unlikely we’ll ever move back.
The NHS is not perfect, it has bureaucratic quirks and too many managers and waiting lists for non-essential surgery. But what it doesn’t do is make managing the health of your family a full-time job – and also, obviously, it’s free. Which means your medical decisions aren’t being made on the basis of money (that’s a simplification, they are of course to some extent, but on a much higher level and in a more universal way) and that two people with the same illness will not receive differing treatments based on how they happen to be insured by.
I listen to my in-laws trying to navigate their treatment and it BLOWS MY MIND.
I think the most horrible part is that those of us with private insurance to complain about are supposed to consider ourselves LUCKY. A not-insignificant number of uninsured people die every year because they can’t afford the care they need. It’s straight-up immoral.
HEALTH INSURANCE!!! Bangs head against wall. DEATH TO HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES.
Health insurance – ARGH! I had a 25 minute conversation today with customer service about my HSA account being suspended over a $.01 discrepancy. A penny – they actually told me I might have to mail them a PENNY. Really – there’s no “supervisor override” for that?!
I went through yesterday how much our health insurance company is being paid, from the company and from us, and then how much we have to pay for a huge deductible. And I got very grumpy.
And next year we get a new dental insurance company, and they give us free electronic toothbrushes. Which is great. But then someone they or we track how often and long teeth are brushed and my husband’s company gets a break on insurance costs of enough time is spent brushing teeth. And ugh. It all seems so creepy and broken as an entire system.
Aiyiyiyiyi! Does that mean the new electronic toothbrushes are chipped so that they can automate this tracking? Because if so I would so totally try to figure out ways to game that system. Yikes!
It apparently does and connects to an app on our phones that then reports back to the company. I have the creepies already.
I am just too old for this kind of “progress”. I still get the creeps when I “window shop” on the web then keep getting ads for the same items I looked for. I don’t think I could handle watching eye toothbrushes.
What?! My electronic toothbrush runs for about 2 minutes. I would think that information would be plenty – no one should have to actually record how long someone brushes their teeth as long as they are using it for the full two minutes.
This is your old house’s way of saying goodbye. ;-)
As someone who currently has a bad/complicated housing situation I LOVE LOVE LOVE reading about your new house. I will read any number of house posts, happily, delighted, etc. If you feel like you’re posting too many, feel free to write up an email and just send it to me. I’m not being sarcastic, I’m 100% pleased with your house posts. Yay new house! <3