Trip pictures!

Hey monkeys,

Here are pictures of my weekend in Switzerland.

I decided to run my little java program on my Turkey pictures. There were definitely some errors, but the results are here. I'll take down the older stuff later.

Enjoy!

-Kyle

Health Junk, Part 5

Calls made since the last post: BMC, Argent, BMC, BU Pathology (twice in a row), BUMC (not a 1-800 number...), some other medical billing people, and Chickering. Here's a quick synopsis:

The BMC people told me that they could not tell me about the itemized things on the itemized list of things I have from them. I would need to call the doctor's office. Additionally, they said that these lists are, in fact, bills (although they don't tell me where to send money or have account numbers listen on them or anything). The lady told me where to send things and what to write on the checks, so now I'll actually be able to pay some of these things that people are waiting for. Amazing!

I called Argent (the collection people) again and this time got to talk to a real person, although she was by far the least friendly person I'd talked to so far. She asked me why I hadn't sent them my insurance card, and I explained that I was in the process of making sure that this charge was, in fact, valid. I certainly wasn't about to pay a bill to people that I'd never heard of for a charge I wasn't sure existed. She didn't seem pleased by this, "of course this is a real bill," she told me. I asked for the number of the B.U. Pathology people that had originally billed me, but they don't have that. I did mention that I had only just heard about this, and she noticed that the address had been changed, but this did little to brighten her tone to me. She said I should fax over the insurance card right away so they could talk to the insurance. I don't have a fax machine, so I decided to call other people before even thinking about doing that.

Now back to the BMC people, trying to track down the pathologist. They gave me a number, which I called. There was a machine, from the pathologist office, stating that if I wanted to report a change in my insurance, I should stay on the line. Otherwise someone would come on the line to help me. This was at 2:40pm, and the machine voice mentioned that the office was open until 3pm.
I waited. Then I was transferred... to a machine that would record my change of insurance information. Must be a fluke... I hung up and dialed again. Apparently one can only change their insurance information with this phone number.

I needed to get ahold of the pathologist another way. I had his name from the Argent people, so I looked him up in the BU directory and called his office number. Nothing. I then called the BUMC (not a 1-800 number! gasp...) and asked for a number for pathology. After two transfers, someone very nice there rooted through their own notes to find a number for me. It's a good one, so here it is: (800) 456-1552.

This is the number of a company who apparently does lots of billing for lots of hospitals/medical facilites/etc. They asked me for my account number, but, since I didn't have a bill from the pathologist, I didn't have one. I said, "I'm trying to locate somebody who does billing for Boston University Pathology." (I took note of that after saying it when I realized how stupid it was. I'm desperate to be billed! Please, someone help me! :-P)

They confirmed that it was a real bill (finally!). I asked why the insurance hadn't paid for it, and they didn't know. They did say that it was pretty strange. Call chickering, they advised.

I look at the Aetna EOB for that charge, and it has a note: "Coverage excludes routine tests, immunizations or exams." Well, this is clearly not any of these. It's not often that I get some sort of pathology that I don't know about that's routine. Thanks. So, another call to chickering.

Despite the fact that I'm getting completely screwed by the lack of benefits in my insurance package, the Aetna people are usually the nicest people I've talked to. Perhaps that's just because they can see the full amount of money that I'm getting fleeced for every time I call. Megan was no different. When I mentioned the charge, she said, "There's no diagnosis with this." I don't really understand what that means, so she explained that whomever billed it hadn't given an explanation for the charges. They assumed it was routine testing and didn't cover it. Megan said I should call the people who were billing me again and tell them to resubmit the charges.

Now, this honestly didn't make any sense to me. The people billing me were now these Argent people, and they didn't even know the phone number of the pathologist. How would they be able to correctly resubmit the bill? Due to my confusion about this issue, Megan offered to call Argent for me. I couldn't exactly refuse this service, so she put me on hold. She came back a few minutes later, saying that they would correctly resubmit the bill.

Whew. And now I'm here. It's 3:40, and I would like to get in touch with the doctor's office and find out about these anethesiology charges. First, however, I need to go to the pharmacy and fill prescriptions before I go on my internship.

More later, as always :-P

Preparing to Send an Appeal (or Dealing with Health Insurance, part 4)

Thursday, a week and a half ago (the day after the last post) I got on the phone with the health insurance people and went over many of the different issues I was experiencing. The first person explained to me how to access all the information online, so I apologized for not realizing that all my info was so available and went to check it out. (The URL for his is: https://member.aetna.com/MbrLanding/login.fcc?TYPE=33554433&REALMOID=06-36d8cb4d-4ac1-44c7-b12d-a80fba4b718e&GUID=&SMAUTHREASON=0&METHOD=GET&SMAGENTNAME=$SM$VpTDdQeU7wjYENtpG34SqCD6x1pnyGMS%2fwM1025WQGa5dTTcHQxurw%3d%3d&TARGET=$SM$https%3a%2f%2fmember%2eaetna%2ecom%2fMbrLanding%2fRoutingServlet%3fcreateSession%3dtrue .)

The site could be nice. It's very well laid out and easy to navigate. However, the details for the medical claims leave something to be desired. If I look at the details for the "Hospital Incidentals" for my big operation, it has two different places which say "Your Responsibility" at the end of the table, but they have two different values. I called Aetna up again and asked about this discrepancy. Of course, the lady on the other end had to put me on hold, then go figure out what was going on. All the details were naturally not on the page. They were covered in the Explanation Of Benefits (EOB). There's a link to View/Print the EOB, so I clicked on that. I got the following message:


"Your Claim Explanation of Benefits (EOB) is not available. We will send you an email when your EOB is ready to view/print. Please use Email Options on your Personal Profile page to update your email address, if necessary."

Great. My EOB isn't ready to view yet. It's small wonder I haven't received any of these in the mail aside from the one that I had in my hands (covering the Otolarynologic foundation bill). I asked the lady why this feature wasn't working online for me, and she had no idea (she was completely nice, as people always are). She said the best thing for me to do would be to send me another copy of all the EOBs. (Another? I hadn't gotten them the first time!)

She suggested that I file an appeal, using the grounds that I'm a grad student on a limited income. She said to first wait until I had the EOBs in front of me, then file. I received them on Saturday. I have more questions on them (which I'm about to call and ask) but I'm running quickly out of time. I am leaving for Germany for a summer internship on Wednesday and as far as I know, I won't have a phone or Internet access in my room there. Meanwhile, my credit rating is certainly going to continue to plunge!

Okay... calling now...

... at least, I will be when I find a working phone here...

That was very unhelpful. Apparently once you exceed the maximum benefits for a surgery, Aetna also stops performing any negotiations on your behalf. Thus, instead of negotiating down my $4,167 bill (usually they're capable of negotiating it down to 60% or so) they left it as is and forwarded it on to me. Since doctors and hospitals usually expect this round of negotiation with insurance providers, that initial price is often jacked up. Awesome.

The same is apparently true with my $14,000 bill. The insurance company applied its contract with them, but, since the bill went over $5000, the limit of cost was breached and negotiations were not employed.

Now to call Argent and see if they can get the Pathology people to send me a bill (since I still haven't gotten one). I got the voicemail box from the Argent people. I left them a message, though I will likely try calling them back.

Who is next? Oh, I need to ask the Boston Medical Center about the Anesthesia charge showing up on one of my bills. I don't know what this is for, since I already dealt with the actual anesthesia bill and paid my part for that.

Hmm, that line rings and just keeps ringing. No hold, no machines, just ringing. I'll wait until 2 so that lunch breaks are all done.

More later :-\

Two more picture sets...

And I'm often changing the code between these things...

Boston's Run to Remember, featuring lzl and Kate:

http://cs-people.bu.edu/paithan/pics/RunToRememberBoston2007/

My walk to school on one of the flowering tree days:

http://cs-people.bu.edu/paithan/pics/WalkingToSchool200705/

Photo Album stuff

I got my Photo Album code running (mostly) though it sometimes doesn't copy/mogrify the pictures correctly. In any case, I uploaded pictures from Anime Boston:

http://cs-people.bu.edu/paithan/pics/AnimeBoston2007/

-Kyle