Why I Would Consider Having Our Next Kid Somewhere Other Than a Hospital

In an attempt to be fair while writing this post, I gave it a couple of days so that it wouldn't just be a raging spewing of fury. But it is still going to be lengthy and ranty, so if you don't want to read it, I won't be offended.

When I was pregnant with CB, I watched The Business of Being Born. It made me ask some very pointed questions to my doctor and made me leery of inductions, epidurals, pitocin, etc, but I was still completely on board with going the whole doctor/hospital route, and although I wasn't POSITIVE I'd have an epidural, I was not opposed to the idea, and ended up having one and having a wonderful experience with it.

And I had a fantastic experience with my hospital. I loved our nurses. I loved the labor room. The recovery room wasn't as beautiful, but it was cozy and there was a couch that turned into a bed for Eric. I loved that I could have CB in the room with me if I wanted, but that the nursery nurses would happily take her until she needed to eat so I could get some rest before I took her home. It was a perfectly lovely experience that I thought I would be happy to have again.

Until we got the bill and then proceeded to have a completely NIGHTMARE with the hospital billing department, culminating this week with our being turned over to collections and putting the rest of our doctor's bill on a freaking credit card so that we could stop dealing with the madness.

So here's the story.

• First, when we were having our doctor's appointments, the people at the office gave us an estimate of what our share of our doctor's services for all of the checkups and the delivery would be, and it came to around $500. We understood that this didn't include our share of the hospital stay, but it was less than we'd been estimating, so we were thrilled. We paid it off before CB was even born. So imagine our surprise when we got a bill from our doctor for an additional $900+. When I called to ask about it, the billing department  said that our insurance just must not have covered as much as they'd thought. Whoops. 
• We also got bills from the hospital, where there were patients confusingly referred to as Megan Long and Megan Long BG (for Baby Girl, apparently.) 
• Both bills looked really similar, and had cited the hospital website as an optional way we could pay our bills. 
• The doctor's billing department called to set up a payment plan. We worked out an amount I would pay each month, and I made the first payment. I called and paid of the blessed anesthesiologist. I made a payment on our hospital bill. I set up a reminder on my phone so that I could make another payment the next month, since the billing people told me they couldn't set up automatic withdrawals. 
• The next month I paid both bills online. I called the number on the bill because I was having a difficult time making one of the payments, and they told me that was because BG Long was under a non-existent SS number, so I could just put in zeros and pay that one. Done and done. 
• In November, I got a notice saying our account was being considered for collections. We called and told them we were making payments, and they said, "Hey! We'll just set it up for automatic withdrawals! $125 for Megan, $125 for BG Long. It will be paid off in a few months." We said that was awesome. Didn't think any more about it. 
• In December, on Christmas Eve, our account was submitted to collections. We found out when we got back from visiting family for the holidays. I called the collection agency Monday morning and explained that this must be a mistake, because I'd been paying my bill every month and it was coming out of my account. They treated me like a deadbeat, and then they suddenly realized that they problem was that the hospital (where my doctor works) and my doctor (who works at my hospital) have completely different billing companies. (And by the way, the name the collection agency gave me was different than the name the billing department called itself.) And that somehow after that first time I paid my bill, I had never managed to talk to the right people again or realized that I was only paying the hospital, so my account with the doctor was, in fact, 4 months delinquent. Great. 
• So I called my doctor's office for the number of their billing company, which, by the way, was a number I had never seen before. I'd called them before, but with the number on which they called me. It was not the same number as the one on the bill. 
• They also treated me like a deadbeat. And I cried on the phone and felt like a complete idiot, while the lady at the office told me it was out of her hands (even though the collection people had already told me they could withdraw if from collections if they wanted to). She told me I could just pay it all if I wanted, but otherwise I'd have to deal with collections. Swell. 
• About this time Eric was coming home, so I let him deal with the rest of it so I would stop crying to Yolanda and Miss Lacey (really) on the phone. He called EVERYONE and asked them for itemized bills so we could make sure that we weren't being double charged for anything. He asked what we should do if we had a dispute ("Oh, you won't have one," said Yolanda) and he paid the collection agency. I suppose we could have just paid the doctor if we were going to do it that way, but Yolanda had stopped answering her phone after Eric asked her about disputes. 

The whole thing was a ridiculous mess. And once I'd figured out what had happened I felt kind of stupid - except the part where I don't because the whole thing was INSANE. I had no idea that the doctor's billing company was totally separate. I'm almost positive that both bills had the hospital website on them for paying your bill online. His office is IN THE HOSPITAL for crying out loud. I later found a note that said something about it on the back of a bill, but it looked like a watermark and honestly, I never read it. I was a little overwhelmed when the bill came, so . . . sorry. And hey, there were like 19 bills that came, and we just kept waiting for them to quit coming, and they just kept coming, all with different amounts and different things that the insurance had covered, and it's possible that there was an extra bill in there and we didn't realize that we owed an extra $1000. 

I just can't get over the feeling that they do this on purpose to get us to pay more without realizing it. I know so many people who have had horrible experiences with hospital billing, especially within my hospital network. I was telling a friend about it the next  day, and she said she's spent time yelling at people because she felt like they were actively trying to prevent her from paying her bill. 

And this doesn't even address the fact that, while I liked my doctor just fine, he wasn't even there to deliver CB's head, and I'd been listening to my nurse say, "Little pushes!" for 20 minutes before I couldn't keep the dang baby in any more. He came running in to pull the rest of her out and to sew me up (while I FELT IT, thanks a lot!) but he was there for a total of 10 minutes and then came and waved at me before he signed my hospital release two days later. And then he sent my insurance a bill for $5400 for JUST HIS SERVICES, and we ended up paying $1500 of that if you count what we paid before CB was born. That had nothing to do with the two days I stayed in the hospital eating gross oatmeal and having people push on my stomach.

After the whole mess was (we hope) sorted out, Eric said, "You know, it makes me want to find a birthing center or something for the next one so we just get ONE BILL for the whole thing." I don't know if that's how it works, but good grief. I had an insanely uncomplicated birth that we ended up paying more for than my sister-in-law did for her complicated emergency C-section (which, yes, was because they had better insurance, but we thought ours was better than it apparently was, thanks a lot, COBRA.) 

Medical billing is broken. And MountainStar Medical Group, you may have lost my business, since clearly you want to get as much of my money as possible without telling me what I'm paying for.