I just liked the sound of that post title. It’s nearly 2am and I’m about to head to bed. Just wanted to make a few random observations.

I’m on two panic medications now. One of them is for when I’m in the midst of a panic attack. It works pretty well, but get this — it costs $180 a month! Medicare pays $148 dollars and I pay $11. TGFM.

When I was younger I used to hear a lot of disparaging things about how bad and useless Medicare was. It must have improved since I became eligible for it when I went on Disability. I have yet to have any problems with it. Where I have run into problems is when doctors, or hospitals, either double charge medicare, or try to get the balance of what they billed out of me that medicare wouldn’t pay for and told me I didn’t have to pay for it. Medicare saved us from some very expensive medical bills — most notably, two surgical procedures in 2000 that rounded out to about $30,000. My out of pocket was about $1500.

Now we’re facing new bills from my ER visits in June. So far it looks like my out of pocket will be around $500. Tallying up what the ER and the ambulance billed Medicare– my pain spasm adventure would have cost me nearly $6,000. OUCH! If you can believe it, one test that was done — an MRI of my kidneys, was billed at $2,000. Medicare paid $150 and I was billed for $1.75!!

Pretty insane, isn’t it?

Especially since I may still wind up at the neurologist since this pain spasm thingy is only being held back by the pain med Flexiril. As soon as I stop taking that, the pain comes back with a vengeance.

Here’s a critter for you: Claudius who will soon be celebrating his 16th year.

Tags: doctors, Medicare, medications, pain, panic attack

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 11th, 2009 at 2:22 am and is filed under About Me, Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.