Her small town does not have a local surgeon, but one comes down from Kansas on Thursdays and does surgeries at the hospital. My mom met with him last Thursday and he looked over her ultrasound and blood test results and determined surgery was necessary. Today my mom found out that her insurance won't cover him doing the surgery.
Her job doesn't offer insurance, so she has a cheap insurance that the state offers to low-income families. I've looked at all the paperwork they sent her and the information on the insurance company's website, and nowhere does it list surgeons that it covers. There's three different lists of family practice doctors and OBGYNs, but no other specialty doctors. There's a page in the big booklet that makes it sound like it will cover any specialist that your family doctor refers you to, but obviously that isn't the case.
So what options does she have? The nearest bigger town (60 miles away) has only one surgeon, so even if the insurance covers him, who knows if she could get the surgery done anytime soon. Then the next bigger town (75 miles away) probably has more than that, but we don't know anyone who's had surgery there.
This evening my mom said that she may end up coming to live with me for a couple/few weeks and get it done here. She figures that if she can find another surgeon, he'll probably want to do his own ultrasound and blood tests (hopefully she's wrong, and he'll use what she's already had done), so she figures it will be a 2-3 week process at least.
After talking to her, I tried to do some research and look up surgeons here in the city, but I didn't have much luck. Only one of the hospitals lists the insurances that each doctor takes, and her insurance wasn't listed on any of them. I suppose we'll have to call every single surgeon's office and have them check it out for us.
Hopefully we'll figure something out... or we'll be paying for it all out of our pockets.
5 comments:
I tend to bitch about Canadian health care until I read something like this. It would scare me to live in the US.
This is the kind of thing that makes me outraged at insurance companies.
That's really hard. Insurance companies can be such jerks. I hope something works out.
Oh boy this is my trouble too. I can't find a specialist to handle a trouble that should have been handled long ago. The more it happens the more mentally stressed I get. Blue Cross makes me want to....
Try fighting it some more. I've been there. They always deny first. If you fight it and document everything you can usually get it worked out. Not that it sounds like you have much time to screw around with them but hey, its a shot.
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