don’t just pay it. do not automatically pay the hospital bill when you receive it. call your health insurance provider and POLITELY say, “excuse me, i just received a bill for $1200 for my hospital visit/ER visit/etc., is that the correct amount i’m supposed to pay?” because hospitals bill you before your health insurance and they will take your money no matter how the amount due may change based on your health insurance looking at it. 90% of the time, if your health insurance is in any way involved in the payment of that bill, you do not have to pay as much as the hospital is billing you for. call your health insurance provider first, and POLITELY request clarification, always remember that the person you are talking to is human and this is just their job, and then you will very likely find out you actually only owe $500.
don’t shout at anyone about it, don’t get mad, just understand that this is The Way Things Are right now and call your health insurance provider before paying the bill your hospital just sent you. there’s a chance the hospital bill might be correct, true, but call your health insurance provider.
THIS IS SUPER IMPORTANT. after my car accident last year the hospital billed me ~$8000. They sent me letters asking me to pay, and I called them back saying my insurance was processing the claim. This is also what I told the collection agency when they kept calling me about the $1000 emergency room fee (billed separately from the hospital fee, mind you). Once everything got straightened out, all I was actually liable for was my $200 emergency copay.
!!!!!!! things my ass didn’t know !!!!!!!!
Yes this is a life lesson my adulting ass didn’t know I needed and I’m out 80 bucks for an anti-nausea pill. 😒😒😒😒😒
Reblogging for American friends.
Also, it is important [for people receiving medical care in the USA] to carefully read all of the items on the medical bill and look for errors and overcharges. I know that the normal feelings of avoidance and dread can make it hard to look at scary hospital bills, and that’s okay! But as the OP mentions, private orgs like hospitals don’t monitor overpayment of bills – they are motivated to charge you extra – and it is basically impossible to get your money back. Read the bill carefully and make sure that the charges are correct, using the links below for help if you need. If they haven’t sent you an itemized list, you can ask for one. Sometimes you will be charged extra for items or treatment you didn’t receive. Most people don’t know that you can dispute medical bills! But in 2009, Consumer Reports stated that 8 out of 10 medical bills scrutinized by a watchdog had errors, and generally you are not obligated to pay for someone else’s error.
You may be charged for using medication that you actually brought into the hospital with you – that’s easy to dispute! You may be charged for the consumables used during your stay such as sheets, gloves, gowns, etc – the hospital should actually cover that under its running budget. You may be charged for a brand name drug if the generic was available for cheaper – the links below explain how and when you can dispute this. You may be charged a surprisingly expensive “oral administration fee” (where a nurse puts pills for you to take in a little clean paper cup and then hands it to you) but that’s worth disputing if you were actually able to take the pill out of a bottle and put it in your own mouth. And so on.
Something that has worked for me: Anytime you have ANYTHING done, call your insurance company and ask what’s covered, what you can expect to be charged, etc. take HANDWRITTEN notes (if possible; I’m not trying to be ableist) of who you talked to, what time, what date, what they said. If/when you get a bill that contradicts what you were told, you may end up faxing a stack of documents with handwritten notes to avoid paying something and it will work.
I mean of course this is a time-consuming pain in the ass, almost like having a second job, but that’s the dystopian hell we live in in the United States circa 2018.
When pet owners talk about their pets it’s guaranteed to fall under one of two categories:
Rover is the sweetest kindest force in my life, my closest ally, my best friend, the family member who molded me as a person who I would absolutely lay down my life for. Please let me show you photos of this perfection incarnate.
Socks is on double secret baby probation now and she’s gated in the living room because she wont stop sneaking out and trying to eat all the towels in the house, like the bastard idiot child she is.
I would like to clarify this is not a “which type of pet owner are you” post. There is no choosing. Pet owners are both of these, all the time, forever. It’s a matter of which one is the conversation topic of the day, and the outcome depends entirely upon how recently their pet tried to eat plastic
My BiL is a neurologist who has done a lot of sleep research and one of his favorite areas of study is circadian rhythms. He says that being a night owl is real, it is predicated on the genetic structure of the brain, it is not just “laziness,” and it is not a disorder. He hypothesizes that its original evolutionary purpose was basically to produce night watchmen—people who can stay awake and alert at night to protect the domicile while the early birds sleep.
So we’re not lazy, night owls; we’re the fucking late shift lookouts. Gonna grab my torch and patrol the perimeter if anyone would like to join me.
WE ARE SENTINELS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@thebibliosphere this made me think of that ADHD sleep cycle post. 😊
I knew there was some sort of evolutionary reason for me being a relentless night owl shitposter.
if youve never physically been in the presence of like, a real live wolf, and you probably wont get the chance to, heres some stuff about them you should know
a wolf’s fur is so unbelievably thick that you can get like, your whole hand into it while petting. and then you can keep going
wolves are a lot bigger than you think they are. think about how big you think a wolf is then just like double that
they dont really smell like dog but they DO smell and youre not going to be able to figure out if its a good smell or not
a wolf really wants to lick the inside of your mouth. he will not stop trying to lick the inside of your mouth at any cost, and generally speaking you need to press your lips together kind of tightly when he approaches your face so that he doesnt worm his damn tongue in there to give you what he thinks is an appropriate greeting
a wolf doesnt really want to look at you while you pet him but he wants you to pet him. hes embarrassed
if a grown ass wolf decides to lay down on you, you just have to deal with it and thats your life now
young wolves, much like young dogs, are overwhelmingly goofy and stupid. a teenage wolf will see your very fragile, very human shoulder and go “i can probably step on that with my full weight” and then he will do it
letting a wolf eat out of your hand is actually not remotely frightening, and youll want to do it all day
ask me about the difference between leopard/cheetah/jaguar print, it’s my field of expertise
What is the difference? Please learn me a thing
cheetahs got dots! little dot dots i want to bop
leopards got filling. it’s cheetah 2.0. Cheetah on meth. look at that leopard shit.
then there’s jaguar. Jaguar is madness. it took leopard print & decided wait. what if–MAW DOTS. it’s just leopard print with dots in the middle, it’s chaos
look at this bullshit
i’m angry just looking at it
so in ascending order: Cheetah < Leopard < Jaguar
C.L.J. someone come up with weird mnemonic for that, i’ve done enough work for you greedy bastards
teachers, share the weird crap your kids have done!
I’m not a teacher (yet) but I do work with students and one of them had the nerve to look me dead in the eye and ask me “why would it be a bad idea for me to eat this entire marker?” They’re 11
An 4th grader asked for a high five by saying, “A little slappy to make daddy happy?”
I did not give him a high five.
A student during break had her head in her arms and was shaking a bit, so i asked the kid next to her whether she was laughing or crying and this 8 year old stared me in the eye deadpan and said “im crying on the inside”
Wait i take that back, I cant believe i forgot about the time i brought in a small stuffed octopus as a class mascot because why tf not. It was a class of high schoolers and i didnt imagine theyd actually care much, but one student snuck in a snack and gave it to the octopus as a tribute. Which led to other students doing the same thing, until every day there was a pile of of offerings to Fweej the Overseer, mostly consisting of things like string cheeses and small bags of chips, but sometimes there wouldd be a couple bucks in quarters, one kid brought in some giant pocky i think, and at one point there was a cold stone gift card. This stuffed octopus gained a cult following.
Later i brought in another stuffed octopus that looked exactly the same but bigger and told the class that Fweej the Overseer accepted their offerings and became stronger. These highschoolers lost their goddamn minds.
Oh my god I love this. Thank you for letting those kids be the dorks all high schoolers are.
