Update: I apologize to all the potential telepaths who were in my area (twice) · 5:04pm Sep 17th, 2018
Warning: the following blog is meant to keep people current on what's been going on. It is not a request for more money. Please treat it accordingly.
For my next trick: herding cats!
However, before we go any further: in the event that Ko-Fi support continues to come in, I want to warn people now: I just switched up the receiving address. The reason? Because while I probably have to report all of this recent chaos as income -- in the States, you can't sign onto Patreon without filing a tax form (which I did, under my real name, SSN, etc), and I currently don't know how to tax-deal with 'personal donations for a charitable reason,' but I'm fairly sure Washington will want their share -- with Ko-Fi, I had been using the PayPal of another. I report everything properly -- but after a certain level, I risk potentially messing up someone else's taxes, and this is the morning when I realized that we could be on the verge of that threshold. Because I could, and hopefully will successfully, explain all of these events to the IRS -- but possibly not on a conventional form. And that form had better be mine.
(I was having bank issues at the original time of Ko-Fi signup. I still have a few. It's another one of those long stories. Remember, I once said that I try not to tell you all about the bad stuff...)
So I've switched PayPal receiving accounts accordingly, with permission. (I actually bought myself a Ko-Fi to test it. Worked fine. And then I deleted that entry from the feed, because 'Estee just bought Estee a coffee' looks weird. But it's still delivering the new person's name...) And I really have to find some way of setting up a proper receiving area with my own bank, maybe with a Doing Business As... But that's a business account, which is its own set of problems (probably including minimum balance), and... there's other things to worry about.
*sigh*
To be fair, I never expected the Ko-Fi page to be used for anything more than -- well, coffee money. If I drank coffee. Just... tips. A potential 'taxable income' receipt from that site? Why would I have anticipated that?
I didn't fully expect a lot of things.
Like what I heard during yesterday's visit. I had the base concept. I didn't have the magnitude.
Two screams, with the root cause related. The decibels, however...
The hardest thing about waiting for the second train is staying out of all the ongoing photography. There's a certain breed of tourist who, when occupying any building with a History, will immediately begin taking pictures of it. Exterior. Interior. Lying down on the floor and getting a capture of the ceiling. 'Here I am being told my train is delayed by two hours! Smile!' I'm not sure it's still possible to get a fresh angle on this place, and it doesn't prevent so many from going for their own personal memory which, of course, will still be completely unique. Because it's theirs.
But it leaves me looking for the little things. Glints of light off lenses. I don't intend to photobomb anyone, and if I'm the subject of the shot, then I'd really rather not be. Fortunately, having the place this crowded means there's a lot of things to duck behind.
I'm going to be stuck here for a while, because this was the trip where I began the experimentation with travel methodology. To wit, this is trains all the way and because the weather was halfway decent, I decided to try skipping the transfer fee. It was in fact about a twenty-minute walk and because I'd neglected to get a schedule for the second train, it had me miss the earliest possible departure. (To be fair, the transfer would have likely also missed the connection: just by less.) So I have about forty-five minutes to use, and I'm exploring.
I'm not going back out into the city. I saw enough during the walk, and some of that was positive. I hadn't been down those streets for some time. There's new shops. One of them instantly stood out: custom bento boxes made to your order, as long as you're content with a lunch of candy. But I didn't stop in any of time: rushing for the train, plus -- the city is expensive. Until this ends (for better or worse), my main cost is transportation. I'm doing my best to make sure no other spending intrudes along the way, but -- that's unrealistic. I know I'll need to eat and drink at some point, hopefully on the cheap -- and that's why I'm walking across the transfer distance, roundtrip on this visit: six dollars saved, which can be used for food.
To go out into the city, even for a few minutes, is to see all the wonders you can't have, indulge, participate in. I'm just about immune to temptation right now, but I'd rather not have the reminder. Multiple reminders.
Because I also passed the homeless.
I'm assuming some of them are truly homeless. There is such a thing as a professional panhandler: find the right spot, get a good flow of patter going, and the dollar you spent on the marker for that cardboard sign truly pays for itself. But you need the acting talent to go with it, and so many of these faces show desperation on a level which would bring an Oscar. And they congregate outside the train stations, because they're asking for the pity of those just passing through, people they don't truly know, who'll see them once and have sympathy...
To pass the homeless is a reminder.
I automatically read the signs, for those who have them. Disabled vet. Abused and out on the street. And I don't want to harden my heart, but... I can't help everyone. I don't know if I can help anyone just now. I've just been helped and I need to use that money to help my mother. I pass them, and... I think about how close I am to joining them.
Sometimes I see that as an inevitability. That I will wind up on the street eventually. When you so often live on the fiscal edge, you can feel the phantom blade drawing sharp across the last supports. All it can take is one truly bad day, and...
(I've told myself that if it happens, I'll at least head for a better climate. If you're going to be homeless, might as well try to sleep through a Texas winter as opposed to, say, a Montana one.)
So I'm staying inside, looking around the building. Shops where I mostly just glance in the window, because so many of them are closed at this hour on a Sunday. (Why keep restricted hours in a major transport hub? I don't know. It doesn't make any real business sense.) Appreciating the architecture. I find a shop selling my favorite chocolate in all the world, and thank goodness that's closed. I pass bars (mostly closed) and supposedly there's a tech store somewhere in here, but I can't find it. And I'm starting to feel hungry. I had one small container of yogurt before I left, because my appetite is still dubious. It wasn't enough, and now my body is starting to complain.
There's a food concourse on another level. (I've never been down there.) I'll go get a donut.
...
...I have (and here's where I lose half my followers) a mild belief in the possibility of true psionics. Not quite on the 'People Got Powers!' level, but... sometimes, I see levels of empathy which feel like they can't be explained through the mere reading of body language. Moments where thoughts almost do seem to link up, and while so much of that can be truly justified through coincidence, it seems as if there's room for another level of exception. That perhaps it's rare, unreliable, untrustworthy, and I'm enough of a skeptic to put any claimant through the full Randi tests -- but it could be out there.
So if there were any telepaths in the train station... that first mental scream was mine. I apologize for the headache. The inner deafening. The pettiness of the triggering reason. Especially that last.
FOUR DOLLARS FOR A DONUT?!?
But it's a gourmet donut, don't I understand that! Look at the complex flavors available! The layering of the colors! The seven dollars they're asking for the small drink which might go with it! And every single stand along the food concourse is like this. A breakfast sandwich which would be $2.50 or so when close to home? Starts at eight, could run out to thirteen, and ask about their seasonal herbs, which they grow on premises within a complex glass box. I go past every last stand, stumbling in a haze of evaporating green, until I escape from the area with a fresh sense of shock and a vow to eat more before leaving the apartment, even if I have to choke it down.
Eventually, I find a bagel on the higher levels. It's verging on stale, far chewier than it should be, the sheer volume of sesame seeds nearly makes me ill -- by the time I'm done, the storage bag has a bottom-coating layer of shed excess -- and in an echo of Douglas Adams, I'm thankful to only be charged $1.50 for it.
Long train ride and this time, because I'm going all the way, I can measure it: two hours, and that's with the express: we skipped about ten initial stops. Still no wifi. I am going to be burning through books at a ridiculous rate. I could preload my Kindle with fanfic before trips, but it means an open tab for every chapter. And even if I was somehow willing to spend, I can't think about a data plan because I'm passing through multiple states. There's too many networks.
Curious, I open the Kindle's wifi tracker. Various cable providers flash by, signals acquired and lost. Internet providers have balkanized America, and you can potentially cross a border with each new town: unlimited data is bounded by zip codes. I could go on AT&T, but that's paying by the meg, and -- no. Besides, I'm not even getting that signal.
(I did see something during the first leg of the trip. For that state, you can get a free day data pass for the mass transit system. There's just a couple of problems with it. First, you're limited to five passes for the lifetime of the activating device, so you really have to choose your times: it's $4.99 each after that and regardless of when you paid, they only run through the local midnight. And second... they only work in the train stations. No wifi in the cars, and it would just mean hours of acquiring and losing signal, hoping you could stay connected long enough to refresh one page...)
I finish the book. I only brought the one book. (Knaves Over Queens was a disappointment. There were, at most, three stories I liked, and I wonder how bad the TV series is going to be.) It leaves me looking out the window a lot, and that has me starting to feel sick. I left my apartment with wet hair, and being up against windows for the whole trip... it's the vents. I'm dry now, but -- I'm hoping not to get a cold.
Final stop. Lots of tracks to pass under before I get into this station, and it's my first time seeing it: I had to stop and recover the car on the original trip. Old building. Nothing fancy. The tunnels are nicer than the waiting area. But there's benches, at least: something the last station lacked. And there's the notice board for arrivals and departures --
-- I stop. Freeze. Stare.
Destination: four miles from your apartment.
Direct line.
The joke I make about my town: I live in the middle of nowhere, and I can get anywhere from there. Multiple major highways pass close by. Some switch over, and the exits are spaced in a way to guarantee that people get lost. If you can get anywhere, then you can very easily go to the wrong place. It offers an endless flow of moderately-lost travelers desperately searching residential streets for someone who can help them, and... well, there's a reason I know all about having direction-face, although in my case -- this is cruel, but accurate -- I think it partially comes from the hopes of 'Maybe that one speaks English.'
But I'm also near airports -- and a major Amtrak corridor. I never thought about Amtrak! If it's just one train...!
I head directly for the ticket counter and ask the big question: how much? At which point, I am reminded of why I never think about Amtrak, because there is no straight answer. Well, it's based on availability, and time of day, and actual day, and how desperate we think you are, plus have you considered that there will be every fee which can be invented within two minutes? The seller dodges around my query for a full minute before I finally hit her with one she can't avoid: how much for a roundtrip right now?
...nearly a hundred dollars. And now we have the other reason for not thinking about Amtrak. (Plus I'd be paying parking. It's four miles straightline. It's more than double that walking, because you can't straightline on foot without being arrested for strolling along the highway.) But the next part is free: the shuttle bus into the city. Leaves every twenty minutes. Right in front of the station --
-- on Monday through Friday.
It's Sunday.
Back inside. Excuse me, I'm walking to the hospital. Which way? And the information desk attendant just stares at me, then very sincerely tells me to take a taxi. No: I was told it was about a mile. I am not paying for a taxi in good weather conditions for one mile. It would take a thunderstorm or blizzard. You're the information person: which way?
I stalk past a half-dozen waiting taxis. Shortly after that, I'm passing an abandoned building. A series of them, a housing complex which no longer houses anything. Cardboard windows. Plentiful material for I am homeless... signs. Beige walls in endless supply. Tiny, dead satellite dishes pull in less than the Kindle.
So it's a segregated city: divided by income level. (I read something about this today. I understated the case.) The hospital is in the wealthy district, the station is in the poor one, and you're not supposed to walk. But I walk it anyway, because it's only a mile. And no one bothers me. I may not match the dominant population, but when it comes to moving through poverty, I'm a native, and I walk like one. There is no desperate must-get-out-of-here in my movements. I may just be visiting, but I'm allowed to be here. I try to radiate that, and so I watch the incomes increase block by block in safety. Eventually, a single street crosses into wealth, and then it's two blocks forward and one turn before I'm in the hospital. Total travel time: just under six hours (had to wait for the first train too), and Admission promptly sends me to the wrong room.
...um... sorry about the intrusion... I'll just -- um... I hope you feel better...
...okay, let's try that without the typo. (I thought they'd moved her.)
She's awake this time. She looks and sounds better, but -- there's little things. At one point, she reads for a while, and I see that she's moving her lips. Some of the words are murmured. I haven't seen that happen before, and I'll report it before I leave. She's also cold, wearing a sweater in the hospital, and while the building is cooler than most -- I think that's an attempt to keep infections down -- it isn't cold. I have to report that too.
When the hospital called me yesterday... it was with details on the next test. A lumbar puncture. (Some of you just winced, hard.) They want to test spinal fluid. And some of those tests will be overnight, and others won't be in for a week. So we're possibly looking at one more week as a minimum stay duration. She's had the test, she said it was just uncomfortable and too much has happened to her back to really worry about this, and also she wants out of the room.
We need to get permission for this and after it's acquired, we can't leave the building. I just take her down to the central atrium. Show her gift shop and fountain. Where the other wings diverge and what they're for. She sees the cafeteria and wants pizza: I have to get permission for that and after gaining such, she changes her mind on the type of slice and because someone came close to touching the first one, that has to be thrown away. Hospital...
I see the sign for the chapel and beeline for it. (I have an odd, deep affection for religious architecture.) I wind up being horribly let down. Her main facility has a beautiful one: something where it doesn't require faith to realize that someone is just trying to give you a quiet spot where you can think. This looks like someone took a yoga exercise room and tossed a Bible into it.
Back upstairs. We catch each other up. I empty out her voicemail -- she's always horrible about that -- and discuss who she's seen. Any phone calls which came in. In the background, every vaguely local football team does its best to lose.
(RL phone call. One of my mother's friends, asking for an update. I tell her I'm going up on Wednesday, and to let me know if she wants to come along.)
A nurse comes in. Antibiotic time, plus a blood pressure check. While that's going on, I ask her whether she's seen a social worker yet. She's on charity care at her main hospital: she can do just about everything there at no cost, although there are times when people forget to pass that on to the billing department. She says no, and I remind her that it has to be soon. And then I make a small joke: that when I heard the name of her current occupancy, I automatically added two digits to the bill.
The nurse glances at me.
"I heard," she says, "this room is five digits a day."
That's exactly how she said it, and that may have been because I'd just used the word. Five digits a day.
My mother is nonplussed. She likes this nurse. She chats with her for a minute, takes the pill, asks about what's being done on her prednisone dosage (for the myasthenia gravis) and she doesn't want any more lasix today --
-- I'm just... sitting there.
Frozen.
We're all the main characters in our own stories, and this is one of the very few times in my life when I act like one. I slowly, carefully tell the nurse that I need to hear that again.
She's confused. But she says it.
I stand up. Tell them I'll be back in about six minutes. Into the hallway, past two-tone hair (who is not only calling for a doctor, but trying to call one away from another patient), off the ward and into the elevator, wait for the doors to close before jamming my hands over my mouth and screaming.
Physically, vocally screaming. The internal one may have set off migraines in every theoretical esper within twenty miles.
Five. Digits. Per. Day.
For the sake of sanity, let's assume that's the low end of the range. It could be $99,999 per diem, but I'm going to call it $10k because I have to call it something. Every twenty-four hours, ten thousand dollars is added to the bill. As the best-case.
She'd been there four days. (Today is Day Five.) $40,000. On the low end.
...okay. She has Medicare. That's good. Medicare takes what, 80% of that if all the paperwork is in order? So now we're only looking at two thousand dollars per day. Minimum. Which could be up to just short of twenty thousand, but let's just call it two because I'm already screaming.
For ten thousand dollars a day, if I have an injured foot, I want a personal massage artist working on the wound, thousand-thread-count bandages wrapped around it, soothing music, a mineral salt bath, and some change coming back. Ten thousand dollars a day is a number I can't think about. It wipes out a full year of income in... well, poverty level, so it's a lot less than a week. And I don't know how long she's going to be in there, and I wonder just how complicated it is to file for personal bankruptcy. Let's see, I just sold everything I owned, that covered her breakfast...
...I'm panicking. I'm not so much spiraling as whirlpooling, going around and around the center. (I had a thought just then, and we'll save it for the end.) And part of me knows that I shouldn't be feeling this much fear. She's always gotten on charity care. She should be able to do it here. But it's a different state. Possibly different rules. What if she can't do it? What if she does and charity care means the hospital covers two extra percent of the bill? What if...
...well, good thing I just found a source of cardboard. Now, turning to the magic marker...
...the elevator stops. I drop my hands away from my mouth, and a man gets on. Sees my expression. I'm not sure what my expression actually is.
"It's going to be okay," he automatically says.
"I just found out about the bill." Syllables hollow enough to echo.
No immediate answer.
"Things work out," he homilies, and gets off before me.
I make myself go back to the room. I can't get rid of the thought. She orders dinner for herself (I stay long enough to reach dinner), and it's tilapia. An incredibly thin piece of tilapia, which probably doesn't cost more than $300. For three hundred dollars, Gordon Ramsey would drop by my table to say hello.
My mother is worried that I'm not eating. She ordered some bread on the side for me. It's dry. Hard to swallow. I can't finish it. Choking on expense.
About ten minutes before I have to go, I finally meet one of her physicians. I want to like her. She doesn't talk down to me, she explains terms when I ask, she has an engaging smile. But she doesn't really have much in the way of news. Just that they've eliminated some things: meningitis is off the table now. They had one miscall, which she wants me to know about: what was originally read on the MRI as a hematoma was actually an irregular blood vessel. No cause or immediate threat, but there should be a follow-up MRI next year.
(I can't picture making it to next year.)
There's going to be a conference between multiple doctors. (Today. I'm not sure when.) I ask if they need me up there to answer questions. No, they can just call. And I report what I've seen, thank her, I really want to like her, but I have to go if I'm going to be home before midnight. They understand.
Walk back to the station, still in daylight (if not for long). The train is waiting to be boarded. Two hours back to the first transfer, and there's a baby across the aisle. She giggles. She cries. She looks at everything. She doesn't have to worry about any of this yet.
I'm out of books, and the train window is reflective in the dark. I watch passengers. Slightly ahead of me, someone is watching Superman die on his iPhone.
This time, moving through the city doesn't make me miss the first possible departure, and so it only takes nearly five hours to get home. Fifteen-hour day.
Two hours of sleep, maybe two and a half. And then I automatically, compulsively wake. Walk through the dark. Thinking. And counted in American coins, I find one hundred and four cents during the walk.
I'm not sure it helps.
I said at the start that this blog is not meant as a request for more money. I still mean that, and it's because I just got a lesson: if it all goes as badly as it could go, no realistic amount is going to help. This site hosts an incredibly diverse group, but I suspect we're still a little short on billionaires. Five thousand fresh dollars could hit the books and I'd say 'That's her lunch!' And... I said it above: she's always managed to get onto the local charity care program. I have to believe it can happen again. Or at least hope. But past performance doesn't indicate future results, so I won't pretend to guarantees.
Still, she'll probably get through their system. It's just that -- I got a look at the worst-case fiscal scenario. On the low end. And it terrified me, with reason. One bad day away from cardboard, when I'd just been reminded that cardboard was a possibility. It hit me at exactly the wrong moment, and so it echoed deep.
We could have a discussion of the American health care system here: we've probably all earned one. (However, this is not the time to use my crisis as your political ammunition and if anyone tries to go that route... I've never deleted somebody else's comment. But there's always a first time.) We could listen to our Canadians as they spontaneously, fervently sing their national anthem, and they've earned that.
It's possible that I had a small panic attack, right there in the elevator. And a dark thought managed to break free of the whirlpool. Graveyard humor, the cool and comfort of cemetery dirt.
If I somehow have a heart attack or stroke out over this, I have to refuse all treatment.
I can't afford to live...
Even with my privacy issues, I came very close to telling everyone what the actual hospital is. I still might. Once you see the name, you'll understand.
Within one minute after writing that sentence, I tried to look up any cost-per-day they might have posted online. The first thing which came up was an article about a billing scandal last year. Taking out liens on the homes of the poor.
I should stop looking things up for ten minutes. I don't need to scream again.
ETA: I just spoke to my mother: she met with one of the hospital's social care people this morning. So for better or worse, that process may be under way.
The amounts to qualify are probably different but she should still qualify.. Heck at 10K a day a week is more than a lot of people make a year
Most hospitals are also very willing to negotiate payments. If you can't pay, they'll set you up on a plan. It won't be phenomenal but generally they try not to be ruinous. Also, that 20% of medicare is AFTER their negotiated rate. So no-insurance it's gonna be 10K, but medicare may be less than that from the start, and there's other rules for hospital rooms.
And you can always dispute charges, if you think she's being ripped off. Just make sure you do it after getting the bill and not months down the road.
Just keep hanging on.
Regarding the tax issue, it shouldn't be a problem:
https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/tax-tips-to-help-you-determine-if-your-gift-is-taxable
https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/frequently-asked-questions-on-gift-taxes
Gift taxes are paid by the person giving the gift, if and only if that person has given a single recipient more than the annual exclusion limit (currently $15,000) in a single year.
Put a mini-update above, but I'll repeat it here: my mother met with one of the hospital's social care people this morning, so for better or worse, that process may be under way.
I may have the dubious fortune of having her admitted the year after other people's misery. The hospital had a huge billing scandal last year, one which pretty much cost them all of their positive reputation with the community. If they're trying to reestablish themselves, they may go easier on her. Or they could say 'Embrace the villainy' and let slip the $750 aspirin of war.
(It's funny, how instinctively fearful I am about place names and how they might give things away. All I have to do is say where it is, and someone would have probably seen the stories. I've probably said enough for one or more people to suspect...)
(I mean, people have guessed I'm probably eastern seaboard just from my having mentioned weather.)
(Maybe that's what scares me.)
Also, I finally transferred a portion of the Ko-Fi money out. About 25%. Because this is what made me realize that even if she's somehow out in a week, those funds will wind up being tapped.
I pretty frequently have random almost intrusive thoughts, a few seconds before whomever I am with mentions whatever I'm thinking about. I'm still trying to figure out which direction that travels.
I also have a habit of grabbing my phone and unlocking it in time for it to go off. I've always felt things around people and known things I shouldn't.
I'm not even sure what a hospital here would cost, let alone one in the USA. On all my visits there I've never had to visit any hospital thank heavens. I did check out my health-care here prior to leaving for the USA, just to know I wouldn't land in a heap of trouble if I ended up in hospital half way around the world, but during my stays I never really gave it much thought. But for $10k a day, I'm not staying in that room any longer than I have to. Heck, I'd move to the hallway if it'd help.
In this case the nurse told you something she heard. She might have misheard, maybe misunderstood. Wrongly informed. You can't be sure. I could tell you I have a room in my house I rent out for $10k, and you would have no real way at that moment to call me out. You'd have to accept my word for that statement. From the story I get that Medicare takes care of part of the bill. So based on that they have to know what the full bill is. Personally I'd give them a call (or track down the hospitals administrative center and ask there), and discuss the matter to see what you're realistically looking at, and also noting that potentially you have no way of financially supporting a bill that exceeds a certain amount.
If they confirm the nurse on $10k, then fine. So be it. It's done, and you'd have to see how to deal with that. Possibly a payment plan or something. But someone at Medicare or the hospital may be able to provide some insight in your options and possible solutions. I'm sure you're not the first to call in with that problem, and if anything it shows you are willing to discuss options with them prior to it becoming a problem (and taking potential corrective actions to prevent the problem from escalating), rather than dealing with the fall-out after the problem already establishes itself.
If that means mom needs to be transferred to her regular hospital, then a 2 state ambulance ride (provided you can't take her home in the car yourself) might be preferable than letting her stay in that hospital. While the care might be top-notch, there is a trade off between the care level given, and the financial backing of that care. If you cannot afford it, despite the fact that it might be the best for mom, I'd seriously look into getting mom to a more affordable room, hospital, or even preferably home. Even if it means loosing that care she's getting now (which hasn't really yielded much results... have they even obtained the medical records from her default hospital?)
Im very sorry. I live in the UK. Anything further Id wish to say, youd have to delete, and you might not get that chance through site violation.
Recursion. Prices, Cogency failiure. See Recursion.
The billing situation is awful, but I’d listen to the other people here who are saying what can be done and giving practical advice. They know more than me about this.
Regarding losing half of your followers due to suspecting psychic things can happen? Don’t worry about it. People in general are a superstitious lot. I also have had plenty of weird experiences, and know people with more, so...yeah.
Not really anything I can offer at this point beyond sympathy and homilies. I doubt you want any more of the latter, so I'll just cut myself off here.
One thing to think about:
The hospital knows about her history, both physical and fiscal.
If they *really* were worried about collecting, you'd both be sitting in a rural public Catholic hospital right now, wondering how they managed to move you that fast.
So the hospital isn't worried.
You shouldn't be either.
When my mother broke her hip, they treated her, then were working on a transfer to a nursing home/long term care facility/whatever you want to call it because that was less expensive for post-surgery therapy. They *knew* she could afford the hospital, but the cycle goes Diagnose, Treat, Transfer elsewhere for any maintenance/therapy/etc... Hospitals have massive overbilling because insurance (Medicare/Medicaid/etc) pay percentages. If they get that fraction, they're not as pushy to get the rest (Thank God).
Hm... An aversion to getting photographed. A tendency to be where odd things happen. You don't happen to work for the CIA, do you?
Check to see if you personally have any liability at all for the bill.
Since she has been taken in and treated without your authorisation or request, it's possible that you personally will not have to pay anything. Any bill will go to your mother, which is still bad but at least they can't touch anything that you own.
Don't sign anything until you find out, and even then, avoid signing anything.
4939052
...Wait, this hospital has ALREADY gotten in trouble for trying to rip off patients?
I'm going to echo some of the others and advise you to check the billing very carefully, check to confirm your liability (or lack of) and Don't. Sign. Anything.
4939058
IDK about 5 figures, but based on experience, here in the USA it costs 3 digits to walk in the door and 4 digits overnight even in grade Z hospital
"Within one minute after writing that sentence, I tried to look up any cost-per-day they might have posted online. The first thing which came up was an article about a billing scandal last year. Taking out liens on the homes of the poor."
...Well, before I got to that part, I was hoping that maybe the nurse was just wrong. You know, not part of the billing department, maybe never had to really know the details, everyone knows the hospital is expensive and you know how rumors can be exaggerated... but, uh. Yeah. Good luck getting on the charity care.
4939052
Hm, yes, I guess it is a point of hope that maybe they're trying to clean up their reputation. But... yeah, still, good luck not having to even interact with that.
Estee
For financial reasons, I've spent the last 18+ months in a halfway house. (Actually, not too bad). This is where the homeless go when they're trying to kick drugs.
90-95% of all homeless are
1 deinstitutionalized mental patients off their meds
2 criminals on parole/probation
3 drug/alcohol abusers
In short, they ain't homeless, THEY ARE BUMS! Any money that you give them will be spent on drugs/alcohol. I LIVE w these guys, I know. If you are really worried about 1, give them food.
That's me, I'm afraid. Although recently I've seen some excited Germans taking pics of the store with gardening supplies in my town. I could've told them that while it was made to look old, it was actually built about 20 years ago, but I didn't.
Also, I guess I'm in the same situation as
4939062 here: anything I say may either be political or consist mostly of swearing.
4939129 While I agree that the best thing to give a homeless person is food (or clothes, especially socks or underwear), as some may spend that money unwisely or may not even be homeless, you really should have taken a minute to review and edit your comment before you posted it.
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Can you blame them? I was lucky enough to stay under a roof thanks to some amazing friends, but I get it. When things have gone so far south that there's nothing you can come up with to fix it, a ten dollar bottle of not giving a damn for a while is an understandable if terrible choice.
I'm sorry our system is such a pile of stress, Estee. The last thing a patient or their family should have to be worrying about when trying to get treatment is how they're going to pay for it.
Good luck, Estee. Hope it works out for you and your mom.
I don't have much to offer either, though if you wanted to commiserate about the healthcare system I'm down. My dad's going into much needed surgery this Friday and it's only thanks to medicare that it's happening at all. Medical bills are just. Daunting. I was lucky and stupid enough to not even realize you paid so much for medical care up until relatively recently in my life.
I've got some stories, if you want to hear about weird unexplainable things that happened just to pass the time.
I didn't know you lived, so do I!
Is there any address or po box I could drop the money to so it's tax/bank trouble free?
I've been meaning to go on an adventure to poke'hunt anyway so traveling someplace new has multiple boons.
Costco does the same thing, and I find it really annoying there.
Best wishes.
God dammit. I hope you get through this.
Combing replies and updates here.
The one big piece of news: while she's no closer to diagnosis or cure, I was told that if/when she is released, they are putting her into a local supervised care facility for a degree of rehab. Medicare will cover up to twenty days of this. (If she's doing well, it could be a shorter stay.) Beyond that, it's co-pay. We're not going to talk about co-pay.
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I spoke to the social services people myself today. (As above.) She can apply for hardship relief and/or try to set up a payment plan, but that can't be done until the actual bills comes in. And when I brought up last year's scandal, there was a near-instant 'We have no idea what you mean' reaction which may be required by corporate law.
They did tell me the hardship relief option isn't listed on the bill. It has to be requested, by phone or in person. And I also couldn't get a rough estimate on how much help might be available, let alone what the bill itself could look like...
I understand that last. But for the first two, I could wearily guess that PR rehabilitation is still in paperwork progress.
(Of course, there's legal reasons to avoid a verbal commitment. They also may not want to get my hopes up. FOOLS! I have no hope!)
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Thankee. I'll try to make sure it all gets labeled correctly in the end.
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I couldn't get confirmation on 10k either, but the lack of it makes me suspect I may be in the right ballpark.
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Losing followers over silly things is a running joke. I forfeited some on the day I wrote a Flash Sentry story...
...and there they go.
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I think we either have a local law against that or a lack of rural public Catholic hospitals.
The facility's social people feel it's not so much negotiating the bill as the payment. And one of them, sounding rather disgruntled about it, told me that it's been fifteen months since her daughter's birth and she's still paying that off.
Right. No employee discount.
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For the record: not only have I still not signed anything, I haven't even been offered something to sign.
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It's slightly more towards extreme collection measures. I wasn't joking about the liens.
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Everyone to Wolfstorm's blog!
...you don't have a blog.
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My privacy paranoia is currently making me reluctant to say the hospital's name. Giving out an address would terrify me.
I know you mean well. I'm not mad at you. I just have my own wounds.
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Me too.
I hope everyone understands if stories/sponsored blogs are stalled out for a while. I'm trying to find the writing space. I'll try again tomorrow, as I'm not traveling during the upcoming storm.
But whenever I start to get into something resembling the right mental place... the phone rings.
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This. This is really important. Makes the worst case scenario a lot better.
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Self care needs to take priority. We understand.
If nothing else, keep coming back here with updates. This isn't something you should have to go through without a sounding board. :/
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Good.
Be very, very careful about this, it wouldn't surprise me if they tried to get you to admit liability for the bill somehow so they could claim against you too. Do not let them do that.
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Yeah, no blog on here. I just felt weird doing it when I didn't have any stories to tie them to when I first joined up, and after that it was habit.
Far as stories go, I'm not actually the person who experienced them, but my mom is a master of story telling so I've got them in good detail and said details have stayed consistent with every re-telling throughout the years so I'd say they're accurate. They're mostly paranormal, except for one that was just creepy.
---
Back in the eighties, my mom used to hang out at the local bookstore downtown to talk lit with all the college professors that frequented that establishment. You could get coffee and a donut, sure, but what was cool about this place was how it stayed open way late. Suited my mom just fine.
One night she's leaving, around 2AM, on the way out to her car, and she sees this guy. He's staring her down with serious intensity, and she starts getting this really unnerved feeling. More even than what you'd expect from being a lone woman encountering a strange man late at night. She quickly gets in her car and starts driving away, and when she checks in the rear-view to see if he's moved, I shit you not, she sees the crazy bastard running after her car.
In her own words, the weirdest thing that's ever happened to her. Dead sober, no alcohol that night at the bookstore.
-----
The next one is going to be two in one. My mom used to live in one of those big houses with the spiral staircases, the kind that have landings for every floor, with a couple roommates. She was reading one afternoon by the fireplace in the living room, at a time when they hadn't finished unpacking much, especially in the basement which was full up on old furniture and dusty sheets covering them. By the fireplace you sometimes heard noises through the chimney, like if it rains or the air moves in the house. My mom swears up and down that during quiet moments by that fireplace, she would start hearing music, voices. Faintly at first. Not worth looking up from the book for, surely. Then it would start gradually getting more audible, until it was like she was one floor above a full cocktail party. She could hear the glasses clink, the murmur of conversation, and a full band. Her housemates heard it too, when she told them about it. The basement was naturally no different than before. This house and that mantle was where she saw a teddy bear catch on fire that, according to the label, was incapable of burning. She went so far as to take it back to its manufacturer to see if they could burn it and they couldn't.
I got more but yeah. There's a couple that are great but I dont want to put on a public comment just for personal reasons. If you have interest, I'd PM it.
Oh hell, an Aussie here so don't know your country's system of Medicare but what a crappy arrangement.
Wish I was one of those billionaires that could help. Stick in there kiddo, if things get really desperate sing out and we'll try and help if possible.
See if there's a local Credit Union you can join. I have a secondary Doing Business As account at my CU, and the only minimum balance I have to maintain is the standard $5 minimum they require for any other account. (Granted, in most cases you have to be a member of one of the organizations or employers the credit union is affiliated with, but many of them have alternative options for that. In my case, a $25 donation to the local "Friends of the {redacted} Public Library" was all that was required to make me a "member" of the organization, and entitle me to join the credit union on that basis.) Credit unions, in my experience, have less of an incentive to screw you over with stupid fees than traditional banks do, because a CU is a not-for-profit organization, and any profit they make has to either be reinvested in the organization or paid out to the account holders as dividends.
Oh, Canada... Our home and native land...
All joking aside, I have been praying for you and your situation, and I'm really glad that people are trying to help support you through this. I'm honestly not sure what else to say, and I don't want to seem overly intrusive and/or rude and/or insensitive, but I've never been through something like this and don't know what it's like. Regardless, I'll continue praying for rest, money, and care enough to help figure what's going on with your mother. I... I hope that helps? It's all I'm sure how to do.
Take a deep breath and remind yourself, the reason they attach such outrageous prices to everything in hospitals is precisely because of cases like this, where they can't expect things to be paid in full. They mark everything up, because when someone can pay it, or has insurance that can pay it, it helps pay for the ones that just don't get paid.
While I'm normally the last person to tell someone not to pay their debts, I will tell you, don't stress over it. If it's as bad as you fear, that's a hole they dug for themselves. Take care of yourself and your family first and worry about satisfying das krankenhaus never, should they do something so inhumane as dropping a six or seven figure bill on your already struggling head.
The hospitals won't go out of business. If that ever became a likely possibility, the political will to nationalize the shit out of the system would suddenly be there.
I know it feels tough for you right now. It has to suck. It's not your fault. We have a system that is crap. Just live. Breathe. Survive. Take care of what's important to you. And hopefully, someday, we'll do better about not creating situations like this.
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I'm some random dude on the internet, you shouldn't just trust me at my word, that means you have survival instincts.
It was when I got to the part about "not able to afford to live" that I figured I would bring it up.
Though if you ever, EVER find yourself in a similarly desperate situation, do not hesitate to ask.
The offer stands.
ICR how the play ended. The movie ended w Brando getting an Oscar
IIRC, Blanche went crazy. You're an author. For you to worry about going crazy is like a fish worrying about getting wet
Medicare, like any insurance company, isn't going to pay the billed price. That's just the price hospitals use as part of their negotiating with the insurance companies. Medicare only pays the "Medicare-approved amount," which is legally the maximum amount the hospital can charge Medicare. You then pay 20% of that cost.
What's key is you have to check and see if the hospital accepts assignment. If they don't, you'll need to follow the steps on the page for sifting through the bureaucracy and billing.
Hope everything works out.
I used to grumble at having compulsory health insurance deducted from my salary when all I needed over the course of the last decade was some cold medication (which, funnily enough, the insurance didn't cover.) But after hearing more and more people from the US recount chilling cases (like yours) where people can incur life-destroying debt from medical bills for events completely out of their control, despite taking all reasonable precautions, despite being fiscally responsible to a fault... I opted for counting my blessings instead.
N-noh. You can download fics as html files to open in the browser, or as epubs for e-reader software.
i.imgur.com/cKxwblpl.png
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-read-epub-files-on-your-kindle/
About the psychic thing, I personally don't believe it, but then, I do believe in Providence, the Holy Spirit, and ghosts, so it's not like I don't believe in causes for the phenomenon that aren't "in your head".
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Calibre for ebook library management, and the fanficfare plugin for, well, fanfic.
It will even scan for updates, just not on a schedule.
Take the whole library with you, offline.