Kill you, stupid insurance

As a grad student in Seattle, life was hard and full of poverty. My school, knowing this, took pity upon me and gave me a seriously restrictive health insurance plan with unbelievably fabulous coverage. When preggers with the Isaac, this made prenatal care and delivery so easy. I could only go to one place, the University's research hospital, for my care, and they paid 90% of everything. I went to I don't know how many prenatal checkups and had maybe 4 ultrasounds. They even covered my epidural and Isaac's circumcision. There were no choices and very few and miniscule bills. I think in the end it cost us about $600 in medical costs to have Isaac, from conception to birth.

It would appear, at least in the first half of this pregnancy, that U.B. is totally getting the short end of the stick in this regard. Before we left Seattle, aware that we were leaving for the insurance unknown for a bit, I forced a visit with my providers at 7 wks, wherein I was told my cervix looked very pregnant and wherein we saw U.B.'s heart beating on an ultrasound. Everything looked cool.

I haven't been to a prenatal visit since. On Michael's new insurance plan with stupid Blue Cross Blue Shield, to visit anyone other than your primary care provider and not have to pay for it entirely yourself, first we must visit the primary care provider and have him or her refer you to another, non-primary-care doctor. Meaning, despite the fact that I am obviously pregnant and NEED TO SEE A PERSON WHO SEES PREGNANT PEOPLE LIKE RIGHT NOW, first I had to visit this guy whose name we literally picked out of a hat (hereafter referred to as Dr. Suck) and who I would never in a million years use for my prenatal visits to get him to refer me to someone else. Confused yet? Frustrated along with me yet? Oh, it gets better.

Michael took a significant portion of his day last Monday to take the HR people here to the mat and get them to hook us up with insurance. This is after he has been here for over a month, uninsured. They told him that they would have to process his insurance application, but until then here are the ID numbers we would need to give to a doctor to get in right now and let us write them on this official-looking hot blue PostIt note!

I made an appointment over the phone to see Dr. Suck, despite the best efforts of his confrontational and sincerely unhelpful secretaries, who informed me that he will see no new patients without having transferred their medical records first. Huh?!? Well, it's a good thing I am a smarty and had my providers in Seattle print out all records pertinent to U.B.'s cooking stint so that I could have them in hand. Evidently those would do, but I still had to bring them in before I can be seen. I did later Monday, at which time I filled out an important-looking orange card with all my insurance information. "Do you have your card?" a different and nicer secretary asks. No, I say, we just got this insurance this morning. "Well, as long as you fill out your information on the orange card, that's all we need." I got an appointment to see Dr. Suck last Thursday.

Last Thursday I arrive at Dr. Suck's office, on time for my 3:15 appointment, with my 17-month-old in tow. The receptionists in unison berate me for not having an insurance card (surprise! things change so much with those things in three whole days!) and make me sign a form saying that I promise to pay my bill if my insurance doesn't pick it up. Then we waited FOR AN HOUR to get in to see Dr. Suck. Luckily for us, Dr. Suck is a family practitioner and has lots of toys in his waiting room. Isaac was a complete angel during the wait and entertained the fellow patients-to-be with his burgeoning vocabulary.

Once in the room, Dr. Suck immediately starts up with a pitch trying to sell me on his practice. His philosophy is that every patient will get their problem solved during their appointment, no matter how long it takes. "I usually run a little behind, as you may have noticed," he says. Apparently he is not aware that one of my most violent pet peeves is people who make me wait. I stifle my urge to choke him. Then, completely oblivious to the three other groups of patients still waiting in the front room, Dr. Suck wants to chat for a bit about Seattle, and he starts making a list for me of family-friendly places in our new neighborhood Isaac might enjoy visiting. After maybe 10 minutes in the room, we finally start talking about U.B., and he recommends three providers to me, but says I should pick whichever I want and turn in a referral form to his office(later I check the BCBS website and none of his providers are accepting new patients). He marks up a sheet and I am done. He has billed me $95 to give me advice about taking my son to the orchard where we already go. I take said sheet to the receptionists, and they tell me that if I could just get my insurance card to them by tomorrow morning then they wouldn't have to bill me directly for the visit. I reiterate, for about the fourth time, that I don't yet have insurance cards. They curtly inform me that, because of this unforgivable infraction, they will not even attempt to use the information I gave them and will be sending the bill straight to me.

So what does this mean? I certainly means I am NEVER giving Dr. Suck my business ever ever ever again. I will use him to refer me, but then he is dropped like a hot potato. I could turn in my referral form and make an appointment with an O.B., but would they give me the same crap about insurance? I keep checking with BCBS, and, a week later, Michael is not even in their system. Thank you, worthless HR people. Was it all for nothing? As far as I can tell, poor U.B. will keep growing regardless of whether I go to the doctor...but I really would prefer to have SOMEbody official care that I need some prenatal visits, and soon.