university physicians & health care: a total nightmare

University Physicians and Health Care are the worst sort of bullies out there, trying to hassle needless amounts of money from their patients. Maybe that is because their patients tend to be university students, and maybe they think they can more easily sucker money out of them.

Let's go over what has happened to me. Over the summer, unable to diagnose something as simple as a UTI, the physicians sent me to get an ultrasound in addition to taking four urine samples from me over the summer. In case you are wondering, you get two separate bills, one for University Physicians so you have to pay your doctors, and the second one means you have to pay for the equipment doctors decided to use.

The first bills sent to me did not have my insurance listed. When they listed my insurance, they did not list what had been covered - probably because they hadn't sent anything to my insurance, THEN when they finally send something to me showing me that they have finally sent these bills to the insurance and that my insurance has covered X amount, the university starts sending me 'Payment overdue' notices. That's funny, isn't it? They don't send me the right bill and when they manage to get it down, the lateness (a whole TWO months) is my fault.

In addition to this, one hundred dollars of the $270.70 for my Physicians bill has already been paid by check. What I love about checks is that the bank will tell you when it was deposited and will send you a copy of said check. I can wave that copy in their face, because they have sent bill collectors - that's right, bill collectors - after me for the amount of (drum roll) $270.70. Wait. What happened to that $100 that was sent in? Yeah, they didn't tell the bill collectors that half of it was paid already.

What's better is that for the University Health Care bill, the bill states $465 and does not list insurance. STILL does not list insurance, meaning they haven't sent me the correct bill for that payment to this day. They have, however, sent bill collectors again. I even called the customer service, which is probably some of the worst customer service ever next to maybe Dell's. The guy consistently interrupted me when I was trying to tell him that said bill did not have my insurance listed. You'd think that that little tidbit of information might be relevant.

So, for the record, make sure to keep copies of your hospital bills. Make plenty of copies and maybe send those copies with a nasty letter right back to them. They say that insurance companies are awful, but this is horrible. I love that they are treating me like I am in debt and running from my bills.

-Monique

Don't worry about the Government

To get this out of the way, I have been dead for ... a long time. Yup, that explains my absence on here to a T. It couldn't be that I'm lazy, no siree ... uh, yeah, but anywho ...

I hate taking showers at night. I stand firm in the belief it's useless, because by the time you wake up in the morning you're no longer completely clean. I mean, sure, you're not as dirty as you would have been had you not showered at night, but you're not clean. For my own part, my hair gets all greasy and I in general feel blech. I don't *feel* clean; it feels like I didn't shower. It's sort of akin to that feeling when you forgot to brush your teeth before bed — god I hate that feeling. Plus, people tend to sweat in their sleep and we all know that's dirty, so how can anyone be sure that he or she didn't sweat in their sleep and thus needs to shower?

The reason this comes up is the last few days I've been working out at night only to get home fairly late. So, instead of going to bed disgusting I decided I should just take a shower at night. Then in the morning I've been too lazy to get up to take showers, and just throw on clothes and go to work. You'd think I would have figured it out after one day, but NOOOOO I did it three times. In short, I'm a moron.

So that's my mini-rant for today. Don't take showers at night, because it's disgusting.

Until next time ...
-Paul

new news

I am still the only one who updates this blog because Paul is exceedingly lazy when it comes to Internet usage. I think if we retitled this journal 'Shoryuken' he would reconsider posting, but who would pay attention? Who pays attention now?

These last few weeks have been filled with festivals. I made a comment to someone last week or the week before that Columbia was known for its festivals, and certainly the city didn't let me down. I think these last two months have been filled with more festivals than I've ever seen while living here.

That being said - and this is also posted on my myspace - I organized a little snapshot gallery of pictures that I've taken of events held here in the city. It can be found here.

Other than the festivals, there isn't much going on. I am taking a wonderful & interesting course on Peninsular literature (my emphasis provided I do not throw everything out the window and dedicate my attention to morning Disney cartoons). Paul & I have been exercising every week after my Thursday course - and for me any exercise is a lot of exercise, I'm notoriously lazy.

In other news, because I will have approximately $300,00 (not a typo) in my bank account tomorrow, Paul & I will most likely not be marrying in October. I had a dream that our families gave us the 'You're married & you're on your own' speech. With as little money as we are making now, I am not just ready for us to fail financially. That being said, we may just elope in the spring, though I'd really like something tiny (Miranda & Steve tiny) next autumn. I think my ring will be coming in this month or the next - I'm really excited about it because of the engraving. At any rate, it is slightly depressing but I keep telling myself that we are committed, we live together, & that I am fortunate enough to have found someone I actually want to marry.

It will be four years next month.

-Monique