Kronk
Full time employment: Posting here.
I'm ranting to anyone who will listen today. I injured my shoulder two and a half months ago. Got misdiagnosed with a Grade 2 shoulder separation. It turns out that it is a Grade 5 separation. It isn't healing right, and the collarbone and shoulder blade aren't really attached.
So I finally saw a Good orthopaedic surgeon this past Friday. He took more X-Rays, which showed the huge amount of separation (which is obvious from just looking at my shoulder). I need surgery. Well, I was hoping to schedule surgery today. But it turns out that the only hospital he's affiliated with (which is a large hospital in our area) is not covered under my insurance. Out-of-network would mean I'm on the hook for 20% of the costs, once I meet my HSA deductible (of 5,700), and an additional 1,000 out-of-network deductible. 20% might well be pushing $10,000 -- hard (if not impossible) to get a straight answer on how much.
So now it looks like I have to find a different shoulder specialist to reconstruct my shoulder (take off part of my collarbone, pin things around, and replace ligaments with cadaver ligaments). Major surgery, I'm looking at 3 months in sling, so I wanted to get it out of the way as soon as I could.
Anyhow, I've gone through a whole bevy of emotions since I got the diagnosis. Right now I'm working on anger -- the insurance I originally bought included the local hospital, but they changed the network a year or two back and I (idiotically) never checked hospital affiliation again.
Time to up that estimate for health care costs when I'm retired...
So I finally saw a Good orthopaedic surgeon this past Friday. He took more X-Rays, which showed the huge amount of separation (which is obvious from just looking at my shoulder). I need surgery. Well, I was hoping to schedule surgery today. But it turns out that the only hospital he's affiliated with (which is a large hospital in our area) is not covered under my insurance. Out-of-network would mean I'm on the hook for 20% of the costs, once I meet my HSA deductible (of 5,700), and an additional 1,000 out-of-network deductible. 20% might well be pushing $10,000 -- hard (if not impossible) to get a straight answer on how much.
So now it looks like I have to find a different shoulder specialist to reconstruct my shoulder (take off part of my collarbone, pin things around, and replace ligaments with cadaver ligaments). Major surgery, I'm looking at 3 months in sling, so I wanted to get it out of the way as soon as I could.
Anyhow, I've gone through a whole bevy of emotions since I got the diagnosis. Right now I'm working on anger -- the insurance I originally bought included the local hospital, but they changed the network a year or two back and I (idiotically) never checked hospital affiliation again.
Time to up that estimate for health care costs when I'm retired...