My Wrist Is Different

In that it is getting worse, rather than has been surgically repaired.

So at about 4:45pm on the Thursday before my scheduled wrist surgery (which you can read about a few posts ago), I got a phone call from the folks who would be doing the surgery.  They told me that my insurance wouldn’t cover it until July of 2012.

Sweet.

I asked why my insurance wouldn’t cover it and they replied that since I injured my wrist months ago, before I was insured by Blue Cross of Central Texas, they considered it a pre-existing condition, which isn’t covered in my apparently terrible health plan.  Not to worry though, as the folks who would be doing the surgery assured me that they would still love for me to come in at the scheduled time to get the surgery anyways.

This tickled me a bit.

Expecting hilarity, I asked them how much this would cost me, were I to still have the surgery.

The woman on the phone assured me that they gave heavy discounts for certain types of payment.  She went on to explain that if I chose to pay by credit card or personal check (what?), they would extend a whopping 65% discount.

I immediately asked what the price would be.

She again explained that the discount is significant and refused to actually quote the price after the discount.

I asked once again what the out of pocket cost for crazy wrist surgery is.

She explained the discount again and finally divulged the after-discount price:

Just over $8,800.

I laughed at her and told her that there was no way that I would pay that amount of money the next day.

She assured me that there was an even better discount if I chose to pay in another way.  I cut her off there and said something like, “is it going to be under a thousand dollars with this next incredible discount?”

She laughed at me and replied, “no.”

I thanked her for her time and terrible news and let her know that unless it was under $1,000, there was absolutely no chance of me showing up on time for my scheduled surgery.  I regret not having listened to the next incredible discount, but whatever, I didn’t want to waste anymore time.

In summation, I can’t get surgery until next July.  I have called multiple times to find out if there is anything I can do, but apparently once you get rejected by your insurance company, your surgeon refuses to call you back to discuss things.

Update tomorrow coming.  I haven’t done too much to the house since I last wrote, as we had a visitor over one of the two weekends, but I took a few pictures and will share them.