Ever buy something without knowing the price?

In August, some kind unknown soul decided to give me a little nudge to make me literally fly off the handle (of my bicycle) and my hand was broken.

After the cast ritual and eventual cast removal, was asked to go to physiotherapy by the hospital.

All we got was a piece of paper with 11 clinics which were supposedly on the same insurance umbrella!

So we selected 2/11 based on proximity, called the insurance company, confirmed that they were both good for our coverage and chose one because they mentioned rates that were slightly lower than the other place.

Now, no actual exact $ commitment was made by either place because they said "we don't know what we will charge you till we evaluate you, etc. etc."

Based on what they actually did, which was a finite time spent, (looking at the others in the room with hand problems)and there was no real variety to the treatment. Just a rotation of toys to play with for all hand folks.

They did do a great job and did all the wax stuff and eventually got my hand to a point where I decided that no more physio sessions were required. So, not faulting the actual physio doctors.

Never paid anything for the visits, because it was supposed to be covered for 30 visits post surgery and went only for 12 or so between October end to December.

Life goes on and the whole thing is forgotten and bang, we got a bill for ~ 600 bucks mid march!

We are still wading through phone calls trying to explain and get explanations from people. San is doing a much better job of getting answers than me simply because I am deflated by this whole episode. My faith in humanity (or the insuring fraction of it) is shaken to the core!

It was not easy to :

a. get the insurance guys to tell me what would be covered before the physio started

b. get the physio folks to tell me what the cost would be

c. find out what I would end up having to pay before starting the sessions (using all my years of mathematics training this would imply the answer to be b-a where both b and a are quoted in US dollars)

That is as crazy as it gets. Imagine walking into a barber shop, sitting down on the chair and you say "haircut", he "nods" and he starts cutting your hair. Then you walk to the counter and he charges you $128.97 when you expect it to be 10 bucks! Heck, he could charge you anything he wants!

Now the insurance company lady is telling me on the phone "Sir, you are responsible for your payment! It is your responsibility to know what you have to pay from your pocket !"

I wanted to strangle her on the phone. How? How does one find out if we keep running in circles between the doctors and the insurance folks with a chicken and egg argument?

Doctor : we don't know what we will charge you till way after we have treated you

Insurance : we wont know what part of the doctors bill will be covered by our insurance till we see the bill

doctor and insurance to patient : You are responsible for covering the balance of what we do not cover on a bill that we cannot determine at the time of treatment!

The best part is the bill we got for 600+ bucks after the original surgery from the anesthesiologist. This dude apparently does not work at the hospital and he came from another hospital in the middle of the night to knock me out.

Really nice of the old chap, except he is not under my umbrella, and it is supposed to be a big umbrella in California!

Now how is a person who is under extreme pain and is hardly conscious expected to ask an anesthesiologist "by the way, are you in my plan? I am at this hospital because this whole building is under the Holy Blue Cross! but are you a Blueman Crossalic?"

Seriously, it would be great as a "responsible person" to know what I am getting into. If an educated person like me who can ask questions and possibly cover this bill over a few months, can be stumped like this, imagine the plight of a lot of people in this country!

Scary!

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Double Trouble

Let us say your house is worth $x in your opinion (based on square footage muliplied by the going rate in your area)

Now you get a property tax statement from the county that says your house is worth x+300k !!! and you now owe the county a bigger tax amount.

You figure that if your house is worth that much, then you should be able to get a really nice interest rate on a loan.. afterall your risk is low considering how much your house is worth and how much money you have put in the house already!

So you start the process and to your surprise and anger, the guy who came to appraise your house values the house at x-200k. You are now scratching your head...

The banks want to keep your mortgage high by lowering house value
The county wants to keep your tax high by raising house value

This whole country is run by crooks at every level!

Maybe we should sell our house to the state of California and repay the bank loan and start renting?

If the above mentioned weren't true, I would be laughing.

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Somebody stop this.. please!

Read this..
If this goes on, I would seriously ask why I should pay any taxes at all?!

Enough is enough!!

Somebody, stop this!

This government better not let this one fly. Time to put some people behind bars and stop this bleeding!

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We are like that only !

This phrase is more popular in India.

Do not know if some famous Indian head honcho said this and it became some kind of classic quote, so readers please provide a link to the origin of "We are like that only!", if you have it.

Now, this is used usually in a defensive state, as in "dont tell us how we are doing, dont complain about how we run things, etc. etc." and it ends with "we are like that only!".

It is high time Americans adopted the phrase.

Why?

The US economy is going through its worst time
Taxpayers are going to be taxed more with all bailouts
Money is literally being pumped in to the same channels which got the US in this mess and

While all this goes on two news items today catch my ears:

1. Citibank gives bonuses to employees in the form of cards with $1,000 to $3,000 loaded in them!

2. American express decides to offer 300 bucks to a bunch of American express card holders, if they would close their credit card account and pay their bills.

Here is the funny part according to what I heard on the radio.

Let us say, you have $ 500 left in your amex Card. Now you transfer the balance to another credit card, thereby essentially paying off the Amex card, you get $ 300 from Amex!

You just made 300 bucks courtesy of some bailout money for which guys like me are busting everything they got working 18 hours a day, 6 days a week! It is however sad that you are still in debt by 200 bucks.

If you happened to transfer your balance to Citibank, the guy who gave you that credit card offer will get another bonus for his brilliant ability to get "more business" and they will give him another $3,000 gift card, courtesy of more of taxpayer money. I will probably have to work 18 hours a day all seven days a week!

If the person whose account Amex is trying to close is as fiscally responsible like I expect him to be (I am literally rolling on the floor laughing at my own sarcasm with happy and sad tears), he/she will figure out a way to transfer the balance do some juggling and get a perpetual payout machinery.

Before you know it, a couple of more billion dollars will be syphoned out of the system.

At that point I will be working 27 hours a day nine days a week!

Hi, if you think that cannot happen, think again. There is no bottoming out of this crisis. The next bailout to bailout the previous bailout will be approximately 10 Trillion dollars and it will involve bailing out rotten banks, loan brokers, real estate agents, mortgage lenders, wall street firms, insurance agents, credit card companies, etc. etc.

What to do?

We are like that only!

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