What’s really interesting, is that this is one of the unions that he had to leave the hospital to go re-sign at on the same day Kayleigh had her surgery. He has to appear in person every 6 months and that date fell on her surgery date. So he called the two unions that he had to go to and one of them (this one) said it was fine for him to come in the day before but the other union refused to budge so he had to just go visit them both on that day. When he re-signed that day, he was somewhere in the upper 100′s for his line position for a job. That is why it was so important for him to go. Then last week he started checking the job board and found he was #86. This company called something like 70 electricians.

We are just both so excited. I can still hardly not believe it. Honestly, I guess I’d gotten to the point where unemployment was life. I have been trying to get this photography business going good with my friend, so I had been really busy, but life became what it was: Steve not working.

Of course, there are no guarantees. We plan to live on as low a budget as possible and save the rest for the time that this may happen again. Somewhere around 2007 we were finally able to start a small savings account and though we were never rolling in it, there’s been a little something to save us during this time when we needed it. And we needed it at least once a month during the lay-off, usually when the Jeep and the mortgage and the electric were all due at the same time.

There’s also a downside to everything, I know Kayleigh is going to be upset. She’s already a daddy’s girl and she’s not going to like this at all. Plus I know Steve will be tired. But I’m not going to complain, we will all adjust. It’s just going to feel like a completely new life at first though.

But a big plus is we’re going to keep our health insurance! With no time off! Eye and dental, too. I’m psyched about that, lol.

So now, after more than 10 months of no work, he went into the union today and got his paperwork sorted out and is good to go!!

All I can say is: thank God we have good insurance!

The total base costs for me? This would include anything related to the pregnancy, so we’re talking the first doctor, the second set of doctors (4 of them), many ultrasounds, lab work, emergency room visit, first hospital stay (1 night), second hospital stay (20 nights), medications, all the various things they charge you for, and anesthetic that I didn’t get that took 30 minutes to prepare for.

Wait, I forgot, the insurance hasn’t yet sent us papers on the hospital stay of 20 nights or anything related to it. So the working total of everything but that so far is $21,219.30. And if one night’s stay at the hospital was $3069.21, we can expect 20 nights to be at least another $61,384.20 when you consider I had more medications, including the steroid shots, saw more doctors, etc.

It’s absolutely unreal and, yes, because “we have no bonanza,” I’m very glad we have awesome insurance through S’s union. They pay 90% of everything and we pay 10% until we hit $500 then we’re done! That’s on me. The same thing on K, too. And not only will $1,000 do good for both of us, but E could go out and bust himself up with his antics and he’d be free, too. This just doesn’t include any out-patient prescriptions (so still have to pay our part for my allergy medication) or someone out of network (no one has been so far). Not that I want E to go bust himself up, but knowing that kid he’s likely to do it at any point in time. Not to mention, if enough stuff has gone through the insurance by this time for K, then E’s tests will be free (we’re going to have him tested for the Vesicoureteral Reflux, too, just to be sure since it runs in families). Not that S doesn’t pay for it, of course, it’s part of his wage package.

So, anyway, stuff for me has started to roll in saying “patient responsibility: $0.00″ which is totally awesome. I’ve also learned some interesting things about insurance and hospital charges and what not.

For example, they charge you for every little thing. It’s ridiculous, really. Ok, K’s still got the feeding tube, right? Well, there’s two parts to it. The first goes down in her stomach and at the end outside of her body it has a little cap that you can close. It’s rather short in length and it’s changed once a week. Then there’s another tube that she gets that connects to that one then to the large syringe that goes onto the machine that squeezes the milk out at the rate the nurses specify. That second, longer tube is changed on either a single or bi-feeding basis. It depends on how much she is getting because sometimes they can fit two feedings into one syringe. Of course, she just went up on her feedings so I don’t think they can get more than one in there anymore. But anyway, that second tube? They charge you for each one individually. There’s a little yellow sticker that the nurses pull off of the package and they stick it on a piece of paper that has places for these stickers. It’s a daily charge sheet. And each sticker has a bar code on it. Each day she gets a new paper. You see where this is going? I’d love to see an itemized charge for her stay, there will be anywhere from 6 to 12 of those little tubes on there each day. I can’t figure they cost very much but think about all the things they use on her!

The hospital bill from my one night in February was itemized. They tested me for crud I didn’t know they were testing me for, such as gonorrhea (which I don’t have, big surprise). Looking at the symptoms online, I can see why they tested for it, but funny no one said anything about it. That test cost $138. They charged $1.60 for a single prenatal vitamin. Funny, considering I can get 100 of the same thing for about $8 or 8 cents a piece. They charged $12 for these stupid maxi pads they made me wear and $11 for a 2 pack of those really annoying mesh underwear things. Yeah, ladies, you know what I’m talking about! Those pads aren’t even comfortable or good quality and most got thrown away unused, yet they always make you use them.

Give me a break, it’s amusing to me. Though I know I wouldn’t be finding these charges funny if I was actually having to write out a check to pay for them!

Also interesting is something the financial lady in the doctor’s office said to me. She was showing me the charge from the day K was born and said something to the effect that the insurance company tells them what they can charge and then pays it. So that’s why I’m seeing a charge for, say, $637 total for doctor B to consult with me one day in the hospital and then it says discount $399.28 and net payment $213.95 and coinsurance applied $23.77. Coinsurance was what we had to pay for that particular day since we hadn’t reached our cap yet, net payment was what the insurance paid, and then discount was what the doctors’ office wrote off because they found out they weren’t going to get it anyway. At least that’s how I understood it.

However, when that same lady asked me who did my delivery, she was NOT amused when I laughed and said, “no one, but Dr. B was running down the hall.” She probably thought I was going to ask for a discount or something. That one totally bombed. Nope, they wanted $2,285 for that but only got $1,015.45 from the insurance (and nothing from us).

The insurance also had to pay $430 to the anesthesiologists for that stupid epidural. If I had to pay anything on that I think I’d dispute the charges after what they put me through. Three tries and then no medication while the second anesthesiologist is trying to get out of the door in a hurry is NOT acceptable. But, whatever!

And, finally, some people are just idiots!
We got a bill some time ago from a pathology company and, this one really confused me at first, because it stated I’d seen a Dr. M in the hospital in February (when my water first broke) and the first day of my 3 week stay and I know for a fact I hadn’t seen him. They were actually billing us for 2-12, 2-13, and 3-23. It was the first bill we’d gotten from them at all and I knew I hadn’t gotten an insurance statement telling me we were going to owe this $367. And to make it all the more interesting, they were saying that we were 30 days overdue on $146 of it. The $146 was applied to only part of 2-12 but then the rest of it, $221, from 2-12, 2-13, and 3-23 was “current.” So, of course, I’m going “what the heck?” I called our insurance company and, sure enough, they had received nothing from this company. So they told me to call them and tell them not to bill me, but to send it through to the insurance company. I called them around 11:30am on a Friday but they were closed so I left a very detailed message. To date, 7 weeks later, no one has called me back and they still haven’t billed the insurance. Yet, they’ve sent through other new charges from 4-10! I guess they don’t want their $367! Because heck if I’m paying it.

They’re not the only ones to do that, either, it seems. Sort of, anyway. K has, as of today, received her first bill, from 3 visits with the eye doctor. They also billed us directly but put in the description that our insurance reported back that K is not covered with them. I would have had another “what the heck?” moment if it hadn’t been for the fact that over the last several weeks, the pediatrician’s office has been calling and saying they’re having problems with our insurance company, too. The insurance company was reporting back to us, however, that K is indeed covered, and have them call them. So I gave the pediatrician’s office the number and emailed them a copy of the insurance card. It’s been a week now since I heard from them, I hope it’s ok. But so I had to call these people today and leave them a message that she IS covered, you need to call the insurance company. Of course, now that I think about this, since he’s an eye doctor, it might be another ball game. We do have eye insurance but it might not be included with the rest. Oh, well.

So there you have it. If you wondered why I’m so scatterbrained lately, there is one reason!

And, blah, blah, blah. It was either waste some time writing about something incredibly boring or go clean out my closet. What would you have picked? :P

So I’m sitting there staring at it going, what the heck!? What possible insurance policy could cost only $20.33?

Then I see that it’s earthquake insurance and I’m going “oh no they did-n’t!”

Pulling out the statement for earthquake insurance that I got in May, I think it was, I read: “Total Amount Due: NONE” and then “copy of bill sent to mortgagee, do not pay.” All in caps, nonetheless.

So… what the heck!?

I’ve received no other bills for this or I would have paid them. Not to mention, both of these mailings are from the same insurance company. First they say don’t pay then they say you’re not covered because you’ve not paid. What is the deal here?

Let’s just hope there’s no earthquake any time soon, ’cause… apparently… we’re not covered.

His ears were red and his nose, and not to mention the bites and the red area around them made the doctor go “hmmm…” so they prescribed him some antibiotics (big surprise there, too) that he has to take three times a day, roughly every eight hours. So that means I have to wake him up around midnight to get him to take his last dose of the day, eesh.

One thing though, the doctor said that E is about 14th percentile in height and 13th in weight which… honestly I’m really surprised at. People who don’t know us real well all the time assume that he is older because of his height. He has these skin and bone arms and legs, yes, but he’s solid through and through and looks tall for his weight. The last time a doctor told me those percentiles, he was 90th in height and 25th in weight. Not that I’m taking a lot of stock in this, of course, that’s just a comparison to other kids his age, but these recent figures don’t make any sense to me. I told the doctor as much, too, who just basically said, well, we’ll keep an eye on him as he gets older. Later Steve said that maybe the doctor thought he was older than he is, maybe he read the birthdate wrong, or even the percentiles that the nurse wrote down. Who knows?

I had to bribe the kid into being good, though, and I didn’t tell him where we were going, just drove there. He’s very uneasy with doctors and hospitals since his surgery. I think I mentioned before that at his post-surgery check-up he had everyone laughing because he kept saying things like, “doctor’s not going to hurt me!” And trying to convince me that I was there to see the doctor, not him. So I bribed him with ice cream to be a good boy without telling him why he was going to have to be a good boy. :) He was good though, so I really don’t care if anyone thinks I’m bad for bribing my kid. :P

Also, the nurse failed to give me my change when I paid my co-pay. I gave her a $10 and should have gotten $5 back. I felt stupid for it, but afterward I told her I needed some change. I felt dumb because to most people $5 is nothing but $5 is $5 and it would have been the only cash I had and I didn’t want to have to use a debit card at the pharmacy (his medicine turned out to cost only 71¢). I think she was embarrassed, too, and she said that she wasn’t used to them being less than $10 so she hadn’t even paid attention to it. I had to laugh and say that, yes, it was really nice, this insurance we get through Steve’s union now. When he worked for that jerk before joining the union, our co-pays were $20! Oh, how I wish we’d had $5 co-pays when I started having problems almost 4 years ago (where I was in the doctor a thousand times between December 2003 and May 2004). Maybe then I wouldn’t have spent $550 on just doctor’s visits and medication alone for what turned out to be something rather minor and just plain stupid.

But along those same lines, the other day we got our first bill having to do with Elijah’s surgery. This one looks like it is for the doctor’s services, we should probably get more from the hospital and maybe someone else like anesthesiologist or something. But out of nearly $1000 billed, I only had to mail in a check for $9.52. Steve made me just stare at him in disbelief though, when he found out that I’d already mailed the payment the day after receiving the bill. He wanted to look at it and make sure we did have to pay it. LOL I just laughed and said, well, there it is, the statement, we wouldn’t have been billed for such a small amount if we didn’t owe it, and pointed out where the insurance had already paid. Silly boy. :P

I guess you never know though. In fact, I just paid off, this month, the hospital from when Elijah was born. We had that sucky insurance then and not only did we have to pay three deductibles (him when he was born, me giving birth, me with those problems soon thereafter) but 20% of everything. I ended up being in the hospital with him longer than most, having been put in under observation, then induced, etc. So the hospital put us on $20 monthly payments and we just kind of stuck to it. It worked out well though, since that was due the same time as some other very large bills, so, yeah, we just paid $20 all the time. In fact, I think there were a few times, just this year, that I totally forgot to pay the bill for a month or two and no one said anything. I finally called for a pay-off amount this month and it was something like $209 so I just paid it off. One less thing to worry about. Now if we could just finish off those credit cards, lol.

Okay that was just a bunch of rambling about nothing…

It was from his old boss and the first paper Steve was supposed to sign was in reference to whether or not we wanted to keep our insurance by paying for it 100%. He was to sign that we wanted to discontinue it or to sign to keep it and send in the paper with a check for $464.38 and that much each month thereafter. That is nuts! That’s more than our house payment!

Then the letter said:

This letter is to inform you about your insurance. Since you left the company effective June 20, 2005, you are responsible for your family’s payment for their insurance until June 30, 2005. What I trying to explain, you pay for 3 weeks of the insurance that was normally taken out of your paycheck. I took $25.14 a week out for your son, and $28.22 a week for your wife. Since you and your family are covered until June 30, 2005 you owe ______ Electric Inc. $160.08 for their part of the insurance. I will deduct that amount out of your last paycheck. By signing this letter, you state that you have recieved your Continuation of Coverage Notice and you understand and authorize me to deduct $160.08 out of your last paycheck. Please return this to the office by Friday, June 24, 2005.

And, yes, the part that says, “what I trying to explain,” does indeed say that. How professional.

So, then I was pretty mad. We are less than two freaking miles, I think actually 1.3 miles, from the place of business yet they spent nearly $5 to send us a certified letter that I had to leave my house to go get. And, every time I go to the post office, I have to set Elijah on the counter so he can’t get away and he immediately grabs the pens-on-chains, holds them up to his ears, and says, “E-ooo?” (Hello) For some reason, the kid thinks they are telephones. So when we came out of there, he had two pen marks next to his left eyes.

And it wasn’t so much as the certified letter in itself as it was the fact that they knew Steve would be at work the whole time the post office was open. If I hadn’t signed his name and me as proxy, he never would have gotten the letter. Of course, maybe that would have been the thing to do.

Plus, it ticks us off that they are being so anal about the health insurance. The way we see it, ethically, the business should eat the cost of our insurance for those 10 days. It’s not like they prepaid a year and Steve left or anything. Now, if there had been contract to this effect beforehand, fine, but no one said anything about if he quit we’d have to pay difference in health insurance or anything. They are just trying to get every last penny out of us.

Now, you say, well, why did you sign the paper authorizing them to deduct the money from the check? Because it was either sign or not get the check at all. Was better to sign and get a percentage of his wages than to get none at all. Apparently, they pulled this on other people as well.

BUT when he picked up the check, with it was another letter. This letter stated that Steve was to sign that he voluntarily left his job without two weeks notice and that he forfeited any remaining vacation time that he had, etc. They want the letter signed and returned “soon.”

I told Steve not to sign it, to just ignore it. :)