I sustained a concussion around a month ago while rock climbing. I was bouldering indoors (padded floors), but the impact of hitting the ground after slipping from the top of the wall fucked me up enough to give me almost three weeks worth of concussion. I begged my family not to take me to the ER immediately, fearing exactly the kind of enormous bill I ended up with, and asked to rest a day to see how I felt. They took me anyways, and I got nothing more than my knee tapped, a 4-minute CT scan, and instructions to get a few days rest and take ibuprofen. They did not give me any medication, and there was no ambulance ride.
A few days after the incident (still very much concussed), I called my insurance (Blue Cross Blue Shield of Western NY) to ask them what my deductible was and about how much this service might cost me. They assured me that even though their website didn't show this hospital as being "in service" that their services would cover any ER visit I made. I made sure to ask for clarification and wrote all the details down, because my head was very jumbled and my thought processes were very slow and sluggish. All in all, based on the expected charges I received after calling the hospital itself, and figuring in my insurance & deductible, I was looking at about $1,500 out-of-pocket expenses. The hospital even sent me a paper copy of my expected bill based on the services I received.
I got the bill in the mail today and am panicking over the amount of money they are charging me. My insurance told me I had $1,264 in unmet deductibles and that after that amount they would cover 80% of my healthcare costs. However. As seen in the bill here....
...It states on that first page that the insurance has already been billed and that they are not covering anywhere near the amount that they said they would. According to this, the insurance only looks to have covered around $350 of the original $4,400 bill. I also received a second bill (same day) for a small amount of money ($33), but it appears to be for the same exact services. What does this mean? Why did I get a second bill? Why is my insurance not covering me when they told me they would? I have so many questions and my head is spinning and I'm really devastated by all of this. Of course this happens on a Saturday so I have to wait until Monday to get the chance to talk to the insurance company.
For reference to my financial situation, I work full-time in retail and earn less than $14 an hour. I worked minimum wage all through college to start a meager savings account, but something of this magnitude is a really big setback in my financial planning and feels completely devastating.
Thank you to anyone for any sort of advice, guidance, or even just for listening.
Submitted October 14, 2017 at 01:20PM by doughnutdiva http://ift.tt/2kQ4Kf8
