BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH

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In terms of health care, people 100 years ago had it pretty darn good.

Sure, they had no antibiotics, practically no sanitation standards, and used whiskey as an anesthetic, but the one thing they didn’t have was hospital billing. And friends, I would gladly have had my appendix sawed out by a drunken frontier doctor rather than have to deal with hospital billing ever again.

And you know the ironic thing? I don’t technically deal with hospital billing. You know why? Because my wife decided that she would not like for me to implode in a ball of raging energy, and she took over the goings-on of our hospital finances.

I have had problems with hospital billing for years. Everyone has. People who have merely driven by a hospital will start getting mysterious bills in the mail. Granted, they arrive about 11 months later, so you just assume you must have had some procedure you forgot about and start paying it.

Of course, I’m kidding here folks. No one actually gets a bill in the mail. At least, not a real one. Instead, you get 43 different bills stating different amounts due in the mail, followed by a nasty letter from a pseudo-collection agency admonishing you for nonpayment. “But, I haven’t gotten a bill that tells me how much to pay,” you say to the letter, clinching it tighter and tighter each time. That does not matter. You should know how much to pay. And you should have known it months ago, preferably before you went to the hospital.

We recently had a lovely surprise, courtesy of the hospital’s Department of Billing Secrecy and Covert Collections. I had to get some X-rays a while back and went to the hospital. While I was in the waiting room slumped on a couch in terrific pain, my wife was taken aside by a “Credit Counselor.” The Credit Counselor was enlisted to inform my wife that we had an outstanding balance with the hospital. The balance was from two years prior. In that time, we had paid off numerous other balances, but they were very interested in this balance.

My wife informed the Credit Counselor that we would be happy to pay it, but that it would help if, oh, I don’t know – THEY TOLD US ABOUT THE CHARGE!?!?!?!?!?!? My wife was instructed to call the payment office and discuss it with them.

Again, this is why my wife handles these things. She has the ability to remain calm in situations such as this. I have the ability to scream, “WHO REPLACED YOUR BRAIN WITH DIJON MUSTARD?”

So she calls to discuss payment options. My wife explained that we would like to pay the amount over a few months’ time. They had taken their sweet time telling us about the fees, so we would take our sweet time getting them the money. Prior to the conversation, I told my wife to make sure that she gets them to send us a bill, so that we know to pay it. For some reason (which I’m sure some hospital billing person will be happy to bore us to death with), each and every time anyone in our family goes to the hospital, this results in an additional account. Personally, I think it is nice that the hospital opted to use chimps to set up their billing system, but they should probably think about upgrading, at least to an orangutan.

When my wife brought up the issue of billing, she was told that they did not send monthly bills. My wife asked why not, since they did for our 18 other “accounts.” This one is different, she was told. At that point, I am fairly sure mustard began to drip from the woman’s ear.

Look, I pay a lot of bills each month. And they all manage to send me a nice little reminder in the mail. I have a lot of things on my mind, and paying for medical services that occurred when Clinton was president is really not right up there on my list of concerns. To demonstrate that point, let me give you this comparison:

Amount of time I have spent today trying to figure out a way to segregate blue socks from black socks, so that I can tell them apart in the mornings: About two hours.

Amount of time I have spent thinking about a two-year-old medical bill, outside of this column: zero

As you can see, I need a reminder. Her solution: mark it on your calendar. Yeah, that will work great. Because the one thing I do on a regular basis is run and check what month it is. I have complained before about the insane billing practices of hospitals, and I can clearly see that nothing will ever change. We will forever be unwilling victims of nonsensical, customer unfriendly practices that have no consistency, no logical origins, and, most importantly, no reminders. I guess in the meantime I will just try and remember to make my payments. And wait for the orangutans.