Seems to me that’s asking for it. I did manage to resist the temptation, but it was difficult.
Do not plug in this USB connector
Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.
I had an appointment with the cardiologists over at the KC VA yesterday and they clarified that USB plugged device I got in the mail. Future shock is what it is. They’re sending me a thing to sleep in the vicinity of that will communicate each night with my nocturnal electrical emissions device [defibrillator].
They’re sending it to me and all I have to do is plug this into it and around 2:00 am the shocker will download my days affairs of the heart to it. And it will quickly upload it all to someplace in San Francisco where another machine will look it over, twiddle its thumbs, and decide whether there’s anything illegal my heart muscle’s been up to.
In the unlikely event my heart’s been sneaking around getting cheap thrills and got busted by the defibrillator whispering gossip about it to the Coleman Camp Stove piece, and it reporting it to the San Francisco Heart Police, they’ll send it to the KCVA cardiologist right after breakfast, next day.
Then, if he thinks it’s worth it, the cardiologist will contact me and explain what’s going on, or went on, while I slept.
So KC VA cardiologists don’t want to see me until something interesting happens and they find out about it from the heartthrob gossip columnists. And the previous day the private cardiologist who put it there in my shoulder examined it and said essentially the same thing,
How about that? Barring any new drama I don’t have to see anyone about my broken heart for a year. And other than the physical therapy that will go on for another month-or-so, I’m draft-exempt insofar as medicos. Sure, I’ll have to fill various prescriptions and be financially crippled for the remainder of my life because of this series of events beginning November 9, 2013. But I’ll just be writing $10 checks to each of them every month unless they turn me over to their collection agencies.
If they send out their constables with summonses or their leg breakers trying to squeeze blood out of a broken heart shaped more like a turnip, power to them. Get in line. I’ve got no more sympathy for them than a multinational bank has for someone loses his job and gets behind on house payments.
Except the VA. If you can’t pay whatever’s due them for co-pay they go directly to Social Security and get it deducted from your pension. I’ve naturally got more than my fair share of sympathy for folks who can do that.
Old Jules
So Far From Heaven 
Contact your VA business office and ask about a payment waiver/forgiveness application. Nothing past 6 months overdue can be forgiven so don’t delay. Anything more than 6 months old you will probably be stuck paying. Definitely worth it.
It seems you have your issues under control much more than before Jules. I’m glad you’re getting along. Take care!!
One day and one fly at a time, one fly. Good seeing you here. Gracias, J
A while back, through missed communications and lousy timing, my group medical insurance through my Retirement Association lapsed for three days. In order to keep it active through those seventy-two hours, I would have to pay a regular two week premium.
Six-hundred some odd dollars.
Screw it.
Had an appointment with a Master of Social Works (MSW) on what I thought was the last day of my coverage, turned out it was the first of the three that I would enter the healthcare system naked.
The appointment was for a “Behavioral / Diagnostic Evaluation Exam” and it lasted forty minutes. During the appointment, it was confirmed I have Depression, Anxiety and ADD.
The exact same things they’ve been treating me for.
Well, it’s Kaiser, so most of the “treatment” is medication and a series of two-week pre-school classes for Remedial Lunacy where they handed out a bunch of copies of everything they read to you. Only it had cartoons showing you how to breathe.
Get a bill from Kaiser:
$658.00.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average MSW in the area makes $35.00 per hour. The therapist I actually get to see now that I left Kaiser tells me the going rate for an hour with an MSW is $135.00.
Basing everything on the $658.00 they wanted for a forty-minute appointment that told me everything I already knew, Kaiser effectively charged me $987.00 per hour for an MSW, which amounted to 80.2% of my monthly premium.
Needless to say, in the two-and-a-half years since this happened, there have been bills and letters and calls and formal letters and calls from guys trying to lower their normal voice register by, like, three octaves.
They still haven’t gotten the point:
it’s not that I can’t afford to pay the bill, nor that I can’t make payments, nor that I can’t make a one-time settlement payment of $375 or thereabouts… or even make three payments on that.
I told them, in so many words, “I will not pay $658.00 for a worthless appointment. I’ll give you guys the benefit of the doubt that the MSW’s pay and total compensation package equals out to about $50.00 per hours. There are the lights that were on in the room, I’ll give you thirty-seven cents. Another twelve cents for office supplies, comes to $50.47, we round it on out to the nearest dollar amount … I’ll give you fifty, call it even.”
Haven’t heard from them since.
Hi and thanks. I’m going to digest all that and keep it in my head for future reference. Gracias, J