Insurance Nonsense

From our trip to Manuel Antonio a few years ago. How I wish we were there now, and not having to deal with the insurance. The tale below is why I like the idea of Medicare for all and socialized medicine. I had nothing but very positive experiences with socialized medicine in Germany.

We got up this morning and discovered that our insurance will not cover Jim's upcoming surgery if he has it at the hospital in Liberia, even if it's just another branch of the same hospital in San Jose. There was a lot of back and forth between us, the doctors, the hospitals involved and the insurance company. It's still not resolved.

But now I have an official billing statement from the hospital in Liberia with the full price for the surgery on it. The decision now is if we should just pay 100% out of pocket for the surgery in Liberia and then submit all the bills to the insurance company, or go to the pre-approved hospital in San Jose and have it entirely paid in full. Depends on how much they will cover if we pay in full and submit for reimbursement. 

Factor in other things, driving either five hours down to San Jose, or flying to San Jose at roughly a hundred bucks a head during a time when even internal flights in Costa Rica aren't much happening. The crazy on my nerves of driving in San Jose, I literally lose my mind trying to navigate that tangle of crazy one way streets and Google isn't much help. I've already told Jim if he has the outpatient surgery in San Jose that I'm booking one night at the Airport Holiday Inn because I do not want to get on the road five hours back up to Tama and have him sick or worse.

Another negative factor is that my insurance company has said they are at least four to six months behind processing claims. If we pay and then submit we'll be putting nearly 6K on ice for quite some time while they decide they'll get around to paying us back. 

Tomorrow I have to check flight availability with Sansa and Aerojet, talk to the insurance company again. No wonder my asthma went nuts today and I glided through the day is a crazy dopey haze. Still raining.

Had to go back to the asthmatic/mast cell diet I have to do sometimes. Only a handful of easy to digest foods from scratch. Very limited. Not exactly jumping for joy over that. It's my prayer than I become grateful for even these limited things even if they aren't the tastiest.

We did have friends over to swim this afternoon, and we had a little fun before the heavens opened again with more rain. Just outside trying to swim again and we had the biggest frog I've ever seen hanging around the pool. You could have put a leash on that thing and treated it like a puppy. Bigger than my fist.

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