You Want TWO MRIs? Blasphemy!

So apart from the Dengue fever I also have chronic shoulder pain which, after four years of sidelining because of life, I’ve decided to take care of. Cut to my doctor’s visit, where the first words out of my mouth have to be “how much is this going to cost?” The doctor understands my strife and allows me to forgo x-rays, as I’ve had them done, we know what’s wrong, etc. etc. He spends a solid 30 minutes with me talking about life, work, school and eventually, my shoulders. I feel like he actually cares about my health, and I still believe he does.

Of course, you can’t continue on with surgery without first getting an MRI to see “what’s going on” in there. He refers me to an MRI clinic and once again, we’re back to money. Each shoulder costs $549 and I need pre-authorization. It turns out the woman at the MRI clinic got all the way to the Chief Medical Officer before getting pre-authorization for both shoulders, based on the fact that “two working shoulders are not necessary to sustain life.”

Cut to the next crisis. My $5000 deductible resets January 1st, despite the fact that my policy didn’t start until July 1st. That means I actually had a $5000 deductible for 6 months. Yeah, that seems fair. Needless to say, now it’s a time game. Now that I have the MRI I need to try and have both shoulder’s repaired before January 1st, or else everything resets and I’ll have to pay that deductible again. Fortunately, Blue Cross through out that silly non-emergency (Dengue fever), so I don’t have to worry about that pesky bill going towards that shockingly low $5000 deductible which I have – as I said – never met. EVER.

In the end, this has become less about me getting healthy and having two functioning arms that allow me to do things like lift a bag, sleep comfortably and someday, pick up my child and more about the stress of attempting to get authorizations from doctors working in offices who have never treated me or met me then rushing to take action so that it can all be covered under the ridiculously expensive insurance policy that pays for next to nothing.

Thankfully, I have therapy today, so hopefully she can talk me down! Oh wait…they don’t cover that either since I’m not suicidal. Oh no…more stress…Tell me again, why is Universal Health Care a bad idea? Oh yeah, because care would just get SO BAD…as if it hasn’t already.