Disappointing

By phoebe marie -
Yesterday, I called up the Cleveland Clinic's billing department to see about setting up an affordable payment plan for the remaining $6900 I owe of the $12,500 I had to pay out of pocket for my cancer treatment.  And I hung up BEYOND frustrated with the smug girl on the other end of the line who told me that a three month plan was the best they could do.  Seriously?  I don't have $2300 any more than I have $6900.  It may as well be the full $210,000 if I have to pay it off in three months!!!  She said that I COULD send what I can each month, but that it will likely, then, be sent to collections.

My initial reaction was to be pisssssssed.  But after cooling off for a few, i realized I am just frustrated.  I mean... it sucks!  I WANT to pay this bill.  I genuinely WANT to give my hard earned dollars to the good people at the Cleveland Clinic who helped me through my treatments and cured me of cancer!!!  That is a bill ENTIRELY worth paying.  And they are basically telling me that if I TRY to pay what I am capable of paying per month, it will be sent to a collection agency.  Meaning that ultimately, the money I DO send in will not all go to the Clinic.  I hate this...

I also hate that, should that happen, this could further fuck up my credit rating.  A credit rating I just spent EIGHT YEARS trying to fix after the financial nightmare I ended up in after my previous marriages and the poor monetary decisions that occurred during them.  A credit rating that Ryan and I desperately NEED to be decent if we are going to get out of this damned house and into one that is not, for me, full of "cancer memories" and for him is not in Cleveland proper and does not have a "Garaj-Mahal."  It just sucks.

I have a few people who have offered to give me numbers of people to talk to who might be more helpful, and I am going to work on that.  I don't want this to end up a negative thing.  I want to sort it out and for the money I have to go to the place that helped me.  

Hopefully something will come of these suggestions.  Fingers crossed...

Oh.  And one more thing... THANK YOU.  At least half of the bills that I HAVE paid off, I was able to pay off because of the donations I received here on my blog from all of you!  Seriously!  There are no words to express what that means to me.  You all helped make this happen, and I cannot thank you enough...

Love love love, Phoebe

Comments

Anonymous said…
Phoebe, between Donald and me, we have owed CCF hundreds of thousands of $$$ oveer the past 27 yrs (2 organ transplants with follow-up care, 2 cancer treatments, ortho surgeries _ we've hit every dept. except OB, I think!) Carefully check your bills for errors, as billing can be totally screwed up. Ask for itemized accounts. Then go right to the head of dept to set up payment plan. The whole things suck big time, and adds to stress. And some still go to collections, although our credit score hasn't been affected. We pay what we can... Salli
May 17, 2012 at 7:40 AM
Michelle Auer said…
I had a dental bill once that was too insane to pay upfront and got met with something similar. I called one of those non-profit consumer credit counseling places, and for free they called the clinic and set up a $50 a month plan. For whatever reason they were unwilling to work with me, but the CCC had zero trouble coming up with a plan.
May 17, 2012 at 2:04 PM
Anouschka said…
Yes, do get an itemized bill and check it. I was charged $8000 worth of labor care by Miami Valley Hospital, even though I was never in labor before my c-section... I never paid my share of the $8000 and they refused to take it off the bill. So it was eventually sent to collection. It did take them over two years to do that though.
May 19, 2012 at 3:12 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Postponing Today's Planned Post...

By phoebe marie -
...because something else really got under my skin today and I clearly need to vent about it or I won't be able to focus enough to do the things I need to do today. So... let's go back in time, shall we, to late last summer.   One of my best friends ' first child was born with some issues.  Lil Spencer spent many a day in the NICU.  While he was there, his terrified mother and my dear friend repeatedly made requests on facebook and the like that if people were so inclined to pray for her newborn son.  Or if not the praying type, to send positive thoughts, good juju, whatever was right for them to send.  I liked that.  I liked the way she did that.  "Please do what makes sense for you and within your beliefs to send some hope to my child." Now jump ahead a few months to when I was sick.  From day one, people were praying for me.  To a god (or gods) I don't believe in - not even in the slightest.  But those prayers made sense for them - and I truly believe t
Read more

Infected. Again.

By phoebe marie -
Image
**This post was transferred from the now defunct "The Long Ease" blog.** Well, today SHOULD HAVE been Treatment Day #24... but things don't always go according to plan... Yesterday, as I sat across from Ryan during our Labor Day breakfast at our corner diner, I was feeling pretty great.  Like, finally feeling like I knew for sure that I was getting better.  No doubt in my mind.  I even felt comfortable saying it out loud.  That was an awesome feeling. After breakfast, we went to run some errands, and I started to feel a little "bleh" in the belly.  Bloated and uncomfortable by the time we got home, I was in and out of the bathroom for a couple hours.  Ryan guessed that I probably got a mushroom in my omelette somehow.  Not hard to believe and the symptoms seemed similar to the mushroom situation.  But as the day went on, I started to feel like it was less gastric upset, and more the same stupid lower abdominal pain that has accompanied my last several infe
Read more

Wow!

By phoebe marie -
Image
So, let me tell you WHY I received this photo from knitting dad today: That's my mum. That's two glasses of champagne. And I received this at around noon their time. So why were my parents, who barely drink at all, swigging champagne for lunch today? Because of the news I got at today's follow-up appointment with my brachytherapy oncologist, Dr. Fleming. As I laid on the exam table, feet in the stirrups, he looked in there and announced "What a beautiful cervix." The nurse nodded in agreement. It was such an odd exchange, it took me a minute to register what they were saying... See, when Ryan booked this appointment for me last month (on the day of my final brachy) he asked them if they would be able to tell by today if the tumor was gone. And the answer was NO - that what they would see would be a necrotic, dying, sloughing away tumor. So really, we went in there today with no real expectations. So, when I finally wrapped my head around
Read more