Bills, bills, bills

Just when I budgeted my money out and give myself a slight cushion something comes up out the blue! It's usually never really cheap either :-(

Babydaddy called me at work 2 days ago and said something along the lines that someone might be calling me about a bill for Pooka. See while Pooka was chilling with her dad early last year she got sick and he took her to the emergency room. Not exactly sure if Pooka's NC coverage worked where he is, he gave me the unopened bills that came to him when I picked Pooka up to take her back home. When I opened them the bill was 95 bucks. That was cheap enough for me to handle so I paid it myself and left it at that. So when I get the call from babydaddy I get in business mode and decide to beat the billing dept/collection dept calling me and call them to let them know I paid that bill. I went online and printed stuff out and everything to prove I paid.

After talking to just about everyone in the hospital I was directed to the proper place and was told that there where 2 bills, one for the ER and one for the doctor. The 95 bucks was for the doctor. I don't even wanna go into how much the ER was but just know it was no where near cheap! I can't have my childs name floating around some collection agency's database so I pulled out the wallet and gave them my info. *sigh* I start calling around my childs insurance company trying to find out if she is covered for out of town medical emergencies. Through the many transfers I finally left a message for a chick who is the supervisor. She called me back yesterday morning and led me on another long trail to find the answer to a simple question: Is she covered when she is out of state? If she was I was going to see if I could get a reimbursement for the payment I made. I finally got someone who could help me and she told me no, for the most part, it's the providers choice if they have an enrollment with them or want to enroll and fill out the paperwork for NC. *sigh* Then if the provider was enrolled with them the provider has to make the claim, not the patient or the collection agency so it was too late anyways! Great!

So I call Babydaddy and ask him how come he didn't give me the other bill when he gave me the first one and he says gave me everything that was mailed to him. *shrug* I told him about the second bill and he claims he is going to give me some of the money back. Truth be told I doubt if I see anywhere close to half of what I paid. Whatever. Part of me says that I shouldn't have paid any of it cuz it happened while she was in his care. But at the time we kinda thought her NC insurance may just cover it. I don't know. I want to be mad, but I can't. That's my child and the bill had to get paid. I wasn't really ready to do it but it had to be done. I just wish her dad was in a better financial position to help me in times like this. *sigh* whatever. I handled it so I need to move on. My trip money got dipped into but business before pleasure. Aunt Diva has a digital cam and I am sure she will send the pictures that she takes to me, so I don't really NEED a digi cam right now. :-(

Did I have to pay the bill off like that right now? No, so I can't really complain. But I really have a problem knowing my daughters name was out there like that, so to ease my mind I had to take care of it while I was in contact with the proper people and had the $ to pay.

I made the right choices.

P.S. Just in case your email accounts were not flooded with this, tomorrow is Orange and Maroon Effect day. In honor of those that were taken in the VT shootings folks are asking that you sport the colors.