April 20, 2003

I've had it up to here* with these people. It is now certifiably true that the friendly servants of humanity at the White County Medical Center Billing Department have exhausted their bag of clues. I can this say with certainty because they have not been sending any clues over to me to help me figure out what in the blazes of Arkansas these people are thinking by sending me bill after bill from one stinkin' hospital visit.

You remember Stefano, right? My affectionately-named kidney stone who has a recurring role in the tragedy of my medical history? Well, as far as I know, Stefano has now been flushed into some protected Arkansas wetland, and good riddance. But yet, his influence is still felt in surprisingly painful ways. Mostly, financial ways.

You see, my friendly neighborhood general practice physician wasn't being much help with the whole kidney stone fiasco last semester, as his primary job seems to be trying to convince me that I'm not actually sick. This is strange, because I am giving him scads of my insurance company's money just by being there, whether I am actually sick or not, and it doesn't seem like a particularly sound financial practice to make me feel like an idiot for coming to his office when I am clearly having tremendous abdominal pains that are not caused by gas.

I don't know why my doctor is reluctant to validate my illnesses, but I had to go to the White County Medical Center ER the following Saturday so they could finally run an X-ray and prove what I had known all along – that the pain was a direct result of Stefano making himself a little too comfortable somewhere in my urinary tract. I was extremely happy to have this finally demonstrated conclusively. In fact, I would have been extremely happy if they had told me I had lost all my possessions in an unlikely UFO-related accident, because I was so doped-up on intravenous pain killers.

It struck me on the way out of the medical center that I did not have to pay anything right then. Whenever I go to the doctor's office, I know I'm supposed to pay a certain amount as co-pay. Evidently not at the ER. I was reasonably sure our country didn't have socialized medicine, so it struck me as odd that I didn't have to hand a sheet of paper to somebody or let somebody see my insurance card or anything like that. All I did was walk out of the building, wondering apprehensively what was going to happen next.

Maybe, I thought, I had already paid. I had been on lots of codeine walking into the medical center that morning, so as far as I knew, I had already ceded the Nebraska Territory over to the hospital in an opiate-induced daze. So I left with a slightly nervous feeling.

The first bill came in November, a month after my fun little trip. I had never gotten a bill before in my life, so naturally it was quite a little rite of passage for me as I ripped it open in the student center and tried to figure out what the heck was going on with it.

The only item on the bill that was clear to me was the part where it said “Pay this amount.” The rest seemed to be a muddled jumble of abbreviations and code numbers that might have been useful if I had memorized the entire Blue Cross database and could speak Sanskrit. Unfortunately, I have not had the time to learn Sanskrit or a database.

So I stared at the bill for a while before I finally decided to take some action. I put it on my desk with other relatively unimportant papers I leave lying around such as passports and Social Security cards and went to eat Oreos. Believe it or not, though, I eventually paid the stupid thing, and went on with my life as if that were the end of it (the ordeal, not my life). That was the cue, of course, for the billing department to send me a SECOND bill.

I wasn't sure what was going on with this new bill, so I decided to call my mother, who has much accountant training, and would surely be able to tell me whether or not I was supposed to pay this or if it was some insurance glitch. The number looked suspiciously look my co-pay, so I figured that's what it was. (If you are one of the three people in this country who actually understand how medical insurance works, you can stop laughing now.)

To this day, we are still not sure what that second bill was for. But she said I should probably just go ahead and pay it. This was a mistake.

You see, the billing department at this particular hospital, and by logical extension, all hospitals in the country, operates according to the same principle as e-mail spam. I'm sure you've been spammed once or 80 billion times in your life up to this point, so you know what I'm talking about. The spammer will first send a tentative, initial piece of spam with a kindly notice at the bottom saying to “Reply” if you would like to be removed from the mailing list. Consequently, you naively and trustingly press “Reply” (you're such a fool), and all of a sudden you are getting spammed by every black market subsidiary of Viagra in all of West Africa.

You see, that first bill that they sent was just a little test, to see how gullible I was. The verdict came back “GULLIBLE.” So they sent me another bill, some six months after the actual service rendered, this one for approximately four times as much.

My accountant mother still had no idea what this bill was for, so she suggested paying it and seeing if it would go away, a theory which is only slightly less valid than the “Just ignore your brother and he'll stop poking your shoulder.” The appropriate theory is “Just wedge your brother between the bed and the wall and leave him for about a week and he'll stop poking your shoulder.” (If you know the equivalent theory to handle evil billing departments, please let me know.)

I had my doubts, but I thought, “Heck, they already know I'm a gullible moron. Why not?” So I let it age for a month or so on my Desk of Rotting Critical Documentation and then mailed it off.

According to the billing department, the payment never made it back. They kindly sent me another copy of the bill, with a comment on the bottom stating that I am past due. If the due date is so important, it might have made more sense to send me this message a week before the due date rather than a week after. There was also a kind of vague threat, saying that if I don't pay in full, they will take “further action.”

Well, I am not a big fan of “further action.” Plus, I am a gullible moron, so I paid the bill again. I expect that the Billing Department is now holding a “Happy Moron Day” party with a big poster on the wall of me looking very drugged and happy, as they celebrate with all of my money.

And I know I don't even have it bad at all. A friend of mine says that she's still getting hospital bills from a broken ankle she had five years ago. What do they expect us to believe? That they keep “remembering” expenses that they forgot to put on the bill the last time? I can just see them now, singing a parody version of “Master of the House” from Les Miserables (the musical that would be perfect if it were about two and a half hours shorter):

BILLING DEPARTMENT
(with raucous abandon)

CHARGE ‘EM FOR THE LIGHTS,
EXTRA FOR THE DOPE,
TWO PERCENT FOR COUGHING ON THE STETHOSCOPE!
WRINKLING THE BED,
USING THE LATRINE,
THREE PERCENT FOR FOLDING BACK THE MAGAZINE!
TREAT THE SICK OR SHAFT THE PATIENTS—
WHY NOT SETTLE AND DO BOTH?
IT AIN'T THAT UPSETTING,
GETTING ‘ROUND THE HIPPOCRATIC OATH!

Next time I get sick and need to go the Emergency Room, just let me die.

*You know, where I'm indicating with my arm.