9 posts tagged “life”

Kids say the oddest things.  Everyone knows that.  What can be just as interesting is what adults will say in the presence of a small child.  Here's a gem I uttered this evening:

"Look at all the spaghetti in your pants!"

I recently acquired a set of wireless headphones for use at work, and I want to share what happened when I first set them up to try them out.  I was still at home, and plugged the transmitter into an outlet controlled by a light switch without realizing it.  When I first put the headphones on there was no signal from the transmitter to find.  The new headphones work on the same band as many cordless phones and so I started picking up a phone conversation from one of my neighbors.  He was on a phone sex line, and the language was more than a little crude.  I'll say right now that I don't know which neighbor or which apartment, but it could not have been far away.  Also, as soon as there was power to the transmitter, even if it wasn't transmitting audio, I no longer pick up the offending phone.  It was still kind of shocking, and more than I want to know about any of my neighbors.  The headphones are at work now, and I don't think there are any cordless phones anywhere near here, so hopefully I won't do anymore inadvertent eavesdropping.

And I thought Visual Studio 2003 felt old!  Today I installed Visual Studio 6 (circa 1998).  This software is old enough that I actually threw away my personal copy back in September.  Unfortunately, I think I'll be spending a lot of time here in the future.  It is being phased out, but it's not easy to replace the amount of code they have built here when it has wound itself so tightly into the business.  But oh, it will happen.  It will happen.

I thought this was an appropriate follow up title to the previous post :D.  Anyway, it was interesting.  Not.  I spent most of the day in a training room watching meaningless slides about the employee handbook.  I had lunch at a restaurant with the new team.  Tomorrow I should get the team orientation.  By the end of the week the boss wants me working on an actual project, which is fine by me.  

It's the end of era.  Today, after more than two years, is my last day here.  Monday I start a new job.  Believe it or not I'm actually doing some real work today.  Mostly, though, I'm doing clean up stuff so that my replacement comes in to an office and can actually find things.  I wore jeans today.  What are they gonna do- fire me?  In doing so, I discovered that the really nice thing about jeans isn't so much that the jeans are comfortable.  I'm used to khakis and slacks now.  It's the the sneakers are comfortable.  I also get to go home a little early today.  I have certain tasks that must be finished, including a visit to a customer site, that will take up most of the day, but any time I have extra I get to keep.

Apparently my interview went very well.  I've got an offer for $50K to start Dec 11.  

I want to start by saying the name of the particular insurance company I'm involved with will remain private for the moment.  If things don't turn out satisfactory, I'll edit this post to include the name so people can choose to avoid the company if they wish (as if many people really have a choice about who their health care provider is!).

When Alice was born a routine screening revealed that she is a carrier for Cystic Fibrosis.  That's not really a big deal, though it was scary for a while because we didn't know at first whether she had the disease or was just a carrier.  As a result of that we need to have some tests done to see which of us (Melody or myself or both) also carried the gene.  It's important because it lets us notify siblings that they are potentially at risk, and because if we both carry the gene our next child would be at a very high risk to get the disease. 

Part of the way the testing works, is that we only test one of us at a time.  If the results come back negative after the first test, the other person does not have to be tested, because we then know for sure that they are the carrier, and even know which mutation they have.  In preparing to have the tests done, we first contacted Melody's insurance company to see what, if anything was covered.  We had to get the procedure codes from hospital and to give the company to see if they would be covered.  According to the person Melody talked to at the insurance company, they would cover 90%, up to $1500, and 100% beyond that.  The max we would have to pay out of pocket would be $150.  While on the phone, she verbally confirmed this twice with the rep, just to be sure.  That sounded pretty good, so we went ahead and had Melody tested first.  Unfortunately, we didn't write any of that down.  Our only proof that this is what happened is the reality that if they had told us otherwise we had (and would definitely have exercised) the option to have myself tested first, or even to put off the test until we could have the money available to pay for it.

Now fast forward several weeks to last night.  The testing has taken place, but we don't have the results yet, and we haven't seen the actual bill yet.  The insurance company, however, has been billed, and we get a statement from them showing the billed amount along the insurance company making various adjustments to it and covering only $400, ultimately leaving us liable for a little over $2200.  I had to spend a very frustrating 45 minutes on the phone with customer service people there.  They tried to claim, at various points, that is was an out of network hospital (it's in network), we were never given any pricing (we obviously were, for the reason listed in the previous paragraph), that they gave us pricing for different PPO Codes than they bill showed (I thought they never gave us any pricing, and we got the codes directly from the hospital) and that because it's only a screening rather than treatment for a condition there is a $400 cap (then why were we told otherwise at first?).  I feel like they were just giving me the run-around. I requested to talk to someone higher up the food-chain, and I'm supposed to get a call back today, but we'll see what actually happens.

My feeling on the whole issue is that I don't care at this point if $400 is the correct coverage under our contract.  They're welcome set up coverages however they want.  My problem is that we were lied to about it.  Perhaps it was an honest mistake rather than an outright lie, but the fact still remains that we were given false information that just happens to save the insurance company $2200.

I plan to emphasize that, and the run-around I had to deal with last night, when talking to the new rep today.  Hopefully I can get a little bit further.  If I can't get this resolved over the phone, I want to at least raise enough stink to get the person who lied to us fired.  There are two reasons for this.  The first is that it will make me feel a bit better.  Yeah, I know it's not the best thing to think, but it's true.  The second and more important reason is that the same kind of thing could cost other people a lot of money in the future, and that person really does not belong in that position.

After today's phone call, I still have a couple actions I can take.  One is to make a general nuisance of myself to their customer service department, and make it plain it will cost them more to deny the claim than to pay it.  Also, I can see if I can get the hospital to amend the bill so that the insurance company will pay.  Personally, I feel that this should be the insurance company's job, since they are the ones now breaking faith.  But since they claim they never told us anything, I may have to attempt it myself.  After that, I can try sending a written letter, possible to VP or someone higher up, and if necessary follow it up with a letter from an attorney.  I've never had to resort to legal threats, and I sincerely hope I never have to, but if necessary I'll give a lawyer $500 to avoid paying $2200, and I really feel the insurance company ought to be liable for my attorney fees as well, as long as I use that as the last possible recourse.

If worst comes to worst, the only way we can pay the bill is to completely empty out our savings towards a house.  Even that wouldn't quite be enough.  I think before I did that I'd pay just enough each month to keep the hospital happy so our credit score doesn't go through the floor, and after we get a home loan cut them off and tell them they can talk the insurance company for the rest of it, but I don't know how well that would work.

Finally got the garage cleaned out this weekend.  It's important because when it starts snowing we won't be able to keep Melody's car on the street, like we have been.  We spent a lot of the weekend in my old stomping grounds.  We ate a Chilis in Delavan Saturday night.  It was homecoming weekend there, and apparently Chilis was a popular spot for homecoming dinner among high schoolers.  Service was less than ideal.  There was a potluck at the church in Elkhorn, and people there wanted to see Alice around her birthday time so they could get pictures.  There are a lot of babies there now- I think 5 or 6 including Alice, plus one person due any time now and another due with twins in a couple months.  Not bad for a congregation with an average attendance of only about 50.  They took a picture with all the babys and several of the toddlers as well.  Hopefully I'll get a copy soon to post.  Alice, as usuall, smiled big for the camera.

Looking ahead, I have an appointment tomorrow to have a cavity filled.  I think it's been 8 years or so since that last time I've had anything more than a cleaning.

Thursday was Alice' first birthday.  w00t!  My parents were supposed to join us for a small party to celebrate, but Mom was sick and Dad had to go to a funeral.  This weekend was also the church retreat up a FallHall Glen.  I'm always grateful for any time I get to spend up at the campgrounds there.  We took some time while there to have a more satisfactory birthday celebration for Alice.  I have video of her 'eating' her birthday cake to post if I ever get around to prepping it.  More likely I'll compile it with other footage from over the course of the year into a DVD I burn and give to grandparents. Today I took Alice to the doctor for her one year checkup. He gave the go-ahead to switch from formula to real whole-milk.  I really must get a system going to make it easy for me to load pictures from the video camera and scanned images.