Yesterday I had an internal temper-tantrum over the fact that the hospital AGAIN billed my insurance for my appointments that are supposed to be self-pay. It saves me thousands of dollars a month to use their self-pay discount vs run the charges through my insurance, thanks to my insurance sucking very much, thank you.
So, anyway, I left two messages for the hospital billing person. The first was regarding the fact that for the month of March they sent me a bill for cash-pay (which I paid) and for my co-insurance amount after they ran the same charges through my insurance. I left the second message after I learned from my insurance company that they had also been sent charges for the month of April, even though I had been assured by the hospital that this was taken care of last month and that mistake would not happen again, at which point my head exploded. Despite said exploded-head, my voice mail messages to them were quite reasonable and calm-but-firm in a friendly tone. I imitate my mom whenever I have to deal with people over the phone, because my mom is possibly the world's most friendly and like-able person, and it tends to get me what I need without having to be crabby at people. (Side-note: As an example, my mom is so friendly and love-able that she once got our family invited to the wedding of someone she met in the line for the bathroom at a comedy club. Honestly. I can't make that stuff up.)
What was I talking about? Right, hospital billing. So this morning I get into work and find that I have a voice mail from the hospital. Our voice mail system is set up so that voice mails are automatically emailed, as well as available through the phone lines. When I opened my email I noticed that the file size for the voice mail was strangely large, but didn't think much of it and hit play as I was getting other stuff set up for my day. The message, it turns out, was so full of apologies and promises and lists of ways that this will be fixed and more apologies that the message went on for a full three and a half minutes. A three and a half minute apology is almost enough to make me forget the billing mistake entirely. This is what calm, well-reasoned, voice mail gets you. It gets things done!
Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that my diagnosis of "major depressive affective disorder, recurrent episode, severe degree, specified as with psychotic behavior" is probably written in bold at the top of my chart. Either one.
