Now I CAN’T go back to my doctor…
…even if I wanted to. We got a letter from Cigna today saying that she is not a member.
This must be a recent development. She WAS listed on the Cigna website as being a member of the network. I went to the one and only appointment, gave the person at the desk the card and the $15.00 co-pay No problem, for once.
But I guess she got tired of being paid pennies on the dollar. Cigna pays out such a cheap amount to health care providers, it’s pathetic. Considering their overhead…they have to pay for office space, equipment, nurses and medical assistants…it’s almost like working for minimum wage. I can’t blame anyone for not taking Cigna.
Well, now Mike has a new argument in favor of getting his employer to let us go back to Blue Cross/Blue Shield next month. It took me forever to find any doctor at all who was accepting new patients and also took Cigna. As doctors go, this lady was pretty nice…I think that perhaps the reason she gave me generic Prozac as opposed to something that might have been better is because she knew that this was all the crappy insurance would pay for. It’s probably a good thing I never went back when I started having the side effects, it might have resulted in a ginormous bill, depending on exactly when she left the network.
So now he can tell HR that his wife’s doctor will no longer take Cigna, and it’s nearly impossible now to find another one who will. This is the same problem that the employees down iin Rhode Island were having, and why they are now allowed to go back to BC/BS.
Okay, so theorectically, if I wanted a new doctor, there’s always Mike’s doctor, the infamous Dr. Quackenstein. But I don’t think so…first of all, I don’t like the guy…I met him, thought he was an asshole. Second, I don’t like his hospital, and I will never set foot in that place again.
In other medical news, Mike went to the dentist today. They want him to spend $20,000 to get his teeth fixed. The dental insurance only pays for $1,000 per year, any more than that, we have to pay for. We don’t have $19,000. Mike says it would just be cheaper to just yank ‘em out one by one as they get painful, and then just get dentures. He’s not having any pain now…trust me, if he were, the whole world would hear about it! Also, he doesn’t have the time for all of these treatments. The dentist was talking about 20 teeth at a grand a pop. Surely his teeth aren’t all that bad, bad enough to need root canal or whatever.
The last time Mike went to the dentist was a couple of years ago, when he had this nasty-assed toothache. He opted to just have the tooth yanked, that cost about $100 and the dental plan paid for it.
In the immortal words of Mick Jagger, “what a drag it is getting old”.
1Nicole
wrote on 24 September 2008 at 5:14
My dentist wanted $13,000 to fix my teeth when I went in July. I’m only 36! And, yeah, my teeth aren’t perfect, but there are A LOT of other things I would rather do with 13k if I had it. I think dentists are even more skeevy than doctors. I went because I was feeling ill and my lymph nodes in my neck were all swollen and the side of my mouth was painful. She said I needed 2 root canals and that my tooth was abscessed. She gave me antibiotics and sent me home.
Well, after several days of antibiotics, I was no better, which was strange, but a couple days later I ended up with GERMAN MEASLES!!! My mouth/lymph node discomfort had absolutely nothing to do with my teeth, it was my body fighting the GM, which is viral, so the antibiotics weren’t helping anything at all. After 10 days of itching and feeling crappy, I finally felt better and haven’t had any tooth issues since.
I think if I really had needed root canals and an abscessed tooth it would be bothering me by now. Stupid dentists.