St. Louis Post-Dispatch Bill McClellan column
By Bill McClellan, St. Louis Post-Dispatch | |
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
Other than being unable to raise my right arm, I felt fine.
Maybe my right arm will start working as mysteriously as it quit, I thought. I've seen that happen with other things. Sometimes a car won't start -- and then it will. Or a lamp won't turn on -- and then it will.
But my right arm did not respond to my hopes. I eventually used my left hand and called my doctor.
Two reasons for that. First, I like my doctor. Might as well hear what he has to say. Second, I can never remember if I'm supposed to get authorization to go to an emergency room or see a specialist. The insurance company seems to change its rules. Or maybe I change policies. At any rate, I can't keep things straight. So I figured I'd check with my doctor and get authorization to go to an emergency room in case I needed authorization.
"Go to the emergency room," he said.
My plan was to walk to the emergency room at nearby St. Mary's Health Center. My doctor suggested I go to the emergency room at
I didn't think I could drive with one arm, so I called my daughter. She drove me to
A technician took X-rays of my right shoulder. A doctor asked me a couple of questions. This is an issue with your rotator cuff, she said. She asked if I needed the name of a surgeon. My daughter said I didn't.
That's because my son-in-law had rotator cuff surgery a year or so ago. My daughter said I should go to the orthopedic surgeon who worked on him.
Somebody made me an appointment to go see him. By the time my appointment came around, my right arm was working again. But the orthopedic surgeon was not deterred. He discovered a lump on my back.
Actually, he discovered it in the same sense that
So I went to a general surgeon and he cut the lump off. At first, he said I wouldn't need a general anesthetic. You seem like a very calm person, he said. It's an act, I explained. So I got my general anesthetic.
Soon I began receiving bills. My first bill from the emergency room was for
That might seem high, but all things are relative. A friend of mine was recently at Lake of the Ozarks. He got sick and had surgery at the hospital there and was then helicoptered to
I also got a bill from a radiologist who read my two X-rays at the emergency room. His bill was
Part of the fun of having a flurry of medical activity -- the emergency room visit, surgery and the visit with the orthopedic surgeon, who also required X-rays -- is the number of bills that are generated.
They are largely incomprehensible. The "charge" is always reduced. Is the reduction related to insurance? I am told it is, but cash-payers get a reduction, too. Nobody pays the official "charge."
I am certainly not complaining about the quality of care I received. Fine doctors, top hospitals, timely care. But why are the bills so difficult to understand?
Nobody makes things confusing by accident. When the health care industry -- hospitals and insurance companies -- make bills hard to understand, it's because they don't want us to understand.
By the way, my arm hasn't bothered me since that first day. That, too, is hard to understand.
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