Friday, December 2, 2011

Coal in the Stocking

I really, really wish insurance deductibles ran on the fiscal year instead of the calendar year! It seems all too often people put off things until the holidays hoping to meet their deductible or just give up on meeting it and wanting to get things done before it starts all over again. Soon after thanksgiving, people flock to the office to get that CT or MRI or endoscopy that they have been putting off, or to have that funny pain when they eat checked. They absolutely want it done before Christmas. Sure enough, we then get to spend the holidays being BAD SANTA telling them and their family that they have some horrible ghastly cancer. Cant we just make deductibles end on April 15th so all the bad news is at the same time?

3 comments:

SeaSpray said...

It might help if you stop wearing the Santa suit Throckmorton. ;)

I am doing exactly that ..as a patient. I lost some time getting to the med appts/things I wanted to do because of some personal matters earlier in the fall and more recently ..a medical debacle wasted another couple of weeks that never needed to happen in the first place.

I really want to get the routine colonoscopy in so I won't have to pay a hospital balance since my deductibles are well met. In my perfect world there would be no medical things done in December.

I like your April 15th idea! I wish December was longer.

I did just find something out thanks to a little accident in which I fell on my knees. Blessing in disguise I guess since x-rays didn't show any bone injury or other damage. Just hurts more. In talking with the ortho doc - he brought up that a lot of people like to get the orthovisk/synvisk injections since deductibles met. Large copay with that and I just assumed it wasn't covered. It is! It is! and so I am getting it! yay! :)

Hopefully, you won't have to be bad Santa this year.

SeaSpray said...

Thought you might appreciate this:

http://www.froedtert.com/HealthResources/ReadingRoom/HealthBlogs/Reflections/Shortages.htm

SeaSpray said...

Hi Throckmorton - Thought if you haven't already seen it you might appreciate this link:

http://drwes.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-to-stop-incenting-emr-note-bloat.html

PS - Come out, come out ..w-h-e-r-e-v-e-r you a-r-e. :)