Something to be grateful for

In other happy news, we have come into a little money today. Well, not "come into" exactly, but "avoided paying". When MommaLlama sprained her ankle ("sprain" sounds so mild, she nearly died, people) last March, we went to the local urgent care place. It was a facility that I knew was in our health insurance network, and we went to "Urgent Care" not "ER" because everyone knows that's cheaper, right? Well... try to follow this bit of convoluted logic: the hospital is in network, so the facility fees were covered. The emergency physicians group is NOT in network, and therefore subject to a separate deductible. Stupid, right?

Just after I sent the check for $299 (!), I decided to email the insurance company and ask them to explain to me how it is possible for non-network physicians to work in a network hospital, and how in the heck am I supposed to know that going in? And why didn't the admission clerk say something? They responded by saying that if it was a true emergency, their policy is to treat all charges as in in network. (Like I said, it was more than a "sprain" - it was an emergency!) And sure enough, three days later, they have paid the bill. Our annual deductible and coinsurance are both met, so this will cost us nothing.

Now I'll have to see if the check has cleared yet. I'd rather stop payment now than wait for an eventual refund. So, there's our happy news for the day. You gotta love it when things work out like that. It was a leap of faith to put something in the basket last weekend (and it wasn't very much...), but God has come through again. No surprise there!