Doctor's Bill

So last month it was very obvious that my poor husband was down for the count and ill beyond measure.

We loaded him up with antibiotics and had our second trip to the doctor's office this year...

Now, if you remember back to this post, our doctor charged us $240.00 for a visit just to get SCB's prescriptions renewed.

Since he's an "in-network" doctor, we got a discount and were left on the hook for $161.02...

Our insurance won't kick in until we reach our deductible, so for this last visit we had no idea if we would be charged more since he was actually sick or not, but we figured it would be around $160 basing it on our previous bill...

Well, we got our bill in the mail the other day and I noticed the doctor classified our visit as a "Level 3" office visit and charged us only $105.00. With out in-network discount we only owe $74.09.

How is it cheaper for us to go when he's really ill, then for 5 minutes to review prescriptions????

I really wish I would have kept our bill from last time to see what our visit was classified as. Guess i'll have to wait for the next prescription renewal visit. If its miraculously cheaper next time too, i'll be fighting with someone over the phone I'm sure. I want our old and simple plan back... and while i'm on the subject of health insurance and venting, my mom's covered California plan still can't seem to get their budgeting department figured out.

They have yet to mail her a bill before her payment is due so I've had to make online payments for her the last few months. It gets better. The one time they did send her a bill, she had to write a check because their website was down. They cashed her check and decided never to credited her account. I had to spend over an hour on the phone with them explaining that she had paid her insurance on time and that they took her money when she received a notice in the mail about missing a payment and the next month her bill was double what it should have been.

I also learned that apparently she can miss up to 6 months of payments before they cancel her insurance because of her government subsidy... which is a good thing otherwise the payment she made that they never credited would have automatically cancelled her insurance so at least I didn't have to fight them on that one too.