photo credit: StreetFly JZ

As expected, we suffered a little setback in debt reduction progress this month when a batch of medical bills arrived. And just as expected, there is no such thing as a cheap medical procedure, so of course we maxed out my wife’s portion of the deductible. Since the deductible on the plan I get through work is fairly high, well, likewise our final bill.

The first obvious lesson is that going without health insurance in this day and age is a sure route to financial ruin. I’m not thrilled with a fairly large bill, but it could have been far larger had we been without coverage!

And since health insurance was forefront in our minds, the wife and I decided to do a little comparison shopping to see what it would cost to get a decent policy on our own. One with perhaps a better deductible. Maybe look into a HSA to get a little tax advantage. That sort of thing.

We used the health coverage comparison engine at eHealthInsurance to look into a pretty broad range of policies. One things was obvious from the get go: we could — assuming we qualify for the plans, of course — get health insurance for a heck of a lot cheaper than what my employer is currently paying on us. Especially after an upcoming rate increase goes into effect.

I broached the subject of dropping us from the group coverage and instead getting a salary increase on par with the plan’s premium with my employer, and he certainly didn’t rule the idea out. So yesterday we submitted an application to see if we could qualify for one of the mid-range plans that meets our needs, halves our deductible(!), and qualifies as an HSA plan to boot.

Anyway, enough rambling for today. On to the raw numbers:

Back in February, I received a panicked call from our local grocery store: my wife had a small — but definitely cringe-worthy — accident. Walking around her car to get our son out of his carseat, she found a patch of black ice on the sidewalk, went down hard, and caught the edge of the base of a light pole with a ridiculous amount of force. When all was said and done, I ended up spending an afternoon in the local emergency room distracting entertaining my son. Meanwhile my poor wife had all the fun that head and spine CT scans and 12 stitches to close up a gash in the ol’ noggin can be. Like I said, most definitely cringe-worthy!

When we initially arrived at the ER, the attending nurse asked what had happened, and more specifically, where it happened. When I told her the details, she let me know that she would be sending the bill to the business who should have been maintaining the sidewalk, that most likely their insurance would cover the bill. And if not, then they would send it on to ours.

So everything was just fine and dandy, right?

Fast forward five months, and earlier this week my wife received a call from a debt collector claiming we owed a ridiculous amount to the company processing her CT scans. You see, the store’s insurance company and our insurance company are still battling it out to determine which one would be paying. The CT scanners were apparently tired of waiting, so decided to see if they could threaten us enough that we’d pay their incredibly inflated claim. My wife was having none of that.

Threaten to ruin our credit?

Go ahead, I don’t care — we’re not planning on borrowing anything anytime soon.

Threaten to sue us?

Go ahead. By the time this reaches the courts, it will have long since been settled.

How about you pay us now, and when whichever insurance company pays, we will send it to you?

Uh, you really don’t think I’m going to be doing that, do you?

Now this last one, when the wife mention it, this one intrigued me. I’m not altogether sure, but I’m believing something so blatantly a lie is probably criminal, though I’ll have to look into it to be sure.

Needless to say, the wife agreed to nothing, except that 1] the debt was not ours to pay, and 2] that Mr. Debt Collector should quit wasting his time contacting us, and that a letter to that effect would be en route to ensure exactly that.

Oh, and of course #3:

Debt Collectors are liars.