3:07, Dumb Dentist, Happy Birthday Mommy

I woke up AGAIN last night between 3 and 4am even with shifting my shut eye time to around 10:30. Bizarre.

Last night after work I wanted to give my healing thumb a test by doing a test run of the normal mode of this month’s Bar-barian challenge.  The test went well as I completed the routine in just over 3 minutes, a large improvement from my ultra-slow and controlled first attempt that took nearly 5 minutes.  I didn’t have the Flip running since I wasn’t sure if I would be able to do it all.

I have been going to my dentist for a long time, probably 10 years.  I like the people that work there and the care they provide.  However in the last couple years they have been aggravating the hell out of me with their billing practices.

When we first started going there we rarely ever saw a bill, they submitted their charges to our dental insurance and were paid the negotiated, lower rate.  They never tried to bill us anything over that.  Well for some reason that changed a few years back.

Now every time Ali and I go to the dentist we get a nice THANK YOU bill in the mail.  In many cases these bills are sizable.  Of course I am never the type to just pay an unexpected large bill without doing some investigation and mitigation if at all possible.  I have been through many rounds of phone calls with them where they try to explain their ridiculously poor billing system that does an awful job of breaking out costs so they can be easily digested.

The dentist recently started collecting partial payment up front based on what our estimated split should be.  But even with that practice, we often STILL see bills for additional dollars.

The office also has adopted a very annoying practice of sending me a bill before they even receive reimbursement from the insurance company.  To me it makes sense to wait until you have the money in hand from the insurance company before billing the customer for what you THINK they will owe.

So anyway, in this latest billing snafu I received a bill for a little more than $200.  This was determined to be my portion for a late September visit that included a cleaning and putting sealant on two small dents on different teeth.  The total charges for that visit was $542.  Ok well some quick math would determine my 20% of that bill should work out to about half of what I was being billed for.

So I called up the dentist once again to dispute their voodoo math.  I presented my numbers and asked why there was a disparity.  The only answer I got back was the dentist was office was not on contract with Cigna, my dental insurer, so maybe stuff was only being covered at a 70/30 ratio instead of 80/20.  I quickly pointed out that even at a 70/30 split the numbers don’t come close to adding up.

The best she could do was to tell me to look at my EOB statements and see if something was turned down for payment and she could resubmit it. Ok great, I will do that.

So I get a hold of my EOB’s and take a look.  For each procedure I had done there is a column for what the dentist charges and the contracted provider amount that was paid out.  I was confused by this since if the dentist was not “in network” for my carrier why would I be seeing negotiated reduction pricing on the EOB?  That difference in pricing is the clear culprit.  The dentist is billing me based on full boat price instead of what Cigna says they agreed to bill at.

So I decided to call up Cigna to get a clarification.  They confirmed that the dentist is not in their network. However through some other 3rd party they are actually supposed to be honoring the reduced billing  amount.  I found this very interesting.

I asked the Cigna representative how do I convey this to the dentist?  She said that she would call them herself today to attempt to clear things up which was a much better option.  I am sure my saying “Cigna says you are billing too much” would not have gotten me anywhere.

I asked the Cigna rep to call me and let me know the result of the conversation so I can follow up again with the dentist office.  I do not take being unnecessarily billed for things lightly, in case you haven’t noticed.

Ali applied the 5.01 update to her Iphone yesterday and it whacked all sorts of shit.  The biggest problem was it screwed with her calendar which she meticulously maintains.  I advised her that since her calendar has had a long time problem with duplication that she writes down her existing calendar items and I blow it away so she can start fresh.

When I looked in her calendar in Outlook she still had stuff that was set up by PocketMirror, the app we used eons ago to get our Palm devices synched up.  I also discovered that the default iCloud settings are problematic if you are using something like Exchange with ActiveSynch.

By default iCloud is set to back up your calendar items and contacts to the cloud.  Well this winds up causing duplication if you use Active Synch which has it’s own processes already in place to keep items between your Exchange mailbox and Iphone synched up.

So anyway, I turned off cloud synch of calendar and contacts, wiped out Ali’s calendar and all was well.  Yea it will take some time for her to get all of the items in there but it needed a good housecleaning anyway.

Today is my mom’s birthday. Mom has had a rough go of things since her last birthday with her more off again than on again employment issues.  She also has been struggling with the aches and pains of getting older which is never fun.  I am hopeful her recent reentry into the employed field will kick start this upcoming year into a much better one than the year prior for her.

Mom is exactly 20 years and one month older than I am. When I was younger that amount of time seemed monumental.  Now it doesn’t seem like much at all.

I already called and wished her a good birthday.  We are going to take her out to dinner Saturday night to Sweet Tomatoes per her request. Should be fun.