thanksgiving (1 in 3 editions)

This has been a long week. But I'm going to first explain the reason that I freaked out oer break. My parents came down to my apartment for Thanksgiving, and with them they brought a letter from a collection agency for $1,600. This freaked me out – not about the cash owed - but the fact my credit could be damaged with this unknown bill. When something gets turned over to a collection agency, you're basically screwed, and when it comes to life, your credit score is really all that matters (especially if you want to get married anytime). The thing was, I had no idea why this amount was turned over to a collection agency. So I called the agency this morning. Apparently I had outstanding bills from my surgery, LAST WINTER. You see, in normal hospital time it takes an entire year for them to work bills through the system. After hearing what the bill was for, I could semi-remember a call from IU Med Center telling me they were going to rerun this particular $1,600 dollar bill through insurance.

The bill was for anesthesiology. It seems that a doctor can be in your network, but the anesthesiologist may or may not be in your network. Now, they don't tell you who the anesthesiologist is until you're laying in the operating room just minutes to getting cut opened. For some reason I never want to check whether or not this anesthesiologist is my network at this point. I was more concerned about him (or her) keeping me asleep for my 13 hour (what turned into an 18 hour) surgery. Usually at this point in the preparation stage we're joking around about Ball State's party habits and who won the game last night. (When the operating room is FREEZING and you have a robe on, you shiver even more when nervous).

So, now they want to charge me $1,600 for this service. Mind you, I am never changed this much when I go under. Apparently they use expensive, out-of-network, anesthesiologists when it's long. I guess this is OK to me, but they need to tell me I owe this money in order for me to pay.

So I finally knew the background on this hospital bill that may ruin my credit.

Fortunately, the collection agency assured me that it hadn't been reported to credit services yet, so I was good.

PAID.