And people wonder why I want to live in a country with single-payer health care

[thewayne]

In June, prior to an appointment with my immunologist, I had a blood draw to measure my immune globulin type-G, it's the only antibodies that can be measured on me as all my other antibodies are functionally zero. It cost me around $10-15.

Late October I had another appointment with my immunologist, and another blood draw. Same thing, measure my IgG. Except the lab screwed up. I receive the results of my IgE blood test, which is below two. Functionally zero. And absolutely worthless.

The lab screwed up. When I went in for the draw, they said they had an order on file for me, even though I had the order in my hand. And they did it wrong. I go ahead to my appointment, I'm told that they will re-run the test as they still have my blood on-hand. So that's cool.

I get the correct results and my level is nice and high.

And now I receive a bill. With two major problems.

First, I was billed for two blood tests, even though they screwed up and ran the wrong blood test.

But what really ticks me off is bloody insurance. As I said, first blood test was around $10-15. These two tests? Over $50 each! And a note on the bill? Out of network!

Today I call Blue Cross. Turns out that the local lab sent them to OUT OF NETWORK LABS FOR PROCESSING! Farkin' barstiches! Kind of defeats the purpose of the place I go to being in-network if they're going to send it to an out of network lab for processing!

Grumble grumble grumble....

Does anyone know if Tasmania is a nice place to live? Russet started talking about it this morning.

Comments

[silveradept]

Typical capitalist situation: "We screwed up, so you should pay for it." Which applies here both for the messed up test and for the insurance deciding you somehow owe more because the tests were sent to a lab that could analyze them, but not the "right" lab.

Good that the results are good, but my eyes roll at the greed that's on display throughout the process.

[thewayne]

'Greed throughout the system' is capitalism at its finest.  It's ridiculous that they have for years sent it to in-network labs.  I may be contacting a lab in Las Cruces: the question will be if Quest will fix this or do I now spend four hours for every test driving back and forth to 'Cruces for blood work?  I'd really hate to fire yet another medical provider.

[silveradept]

What a set of choices, right? Either they get to continue getting more money because they decide, deliberately, to send things to places they can change you more for, or you have to spend ridiculous amounts of time and fuel to make sure it gets done correctly yourself. It's certainly a good reason to abolish greedy providers and replace them with something that has to actually do their jobs.