20 August 2024, Can't complain (although I want to)

[KathyB]

I am in a bad mood, mostly because of the temperature outside, although it's quite balmy in comparison with a lot of the country, and I don't feel I have the right to complain unless the temperature or the heat index goes over 100°F. (The temperature and the heat index are basically the same thing here because of the lack of humidity.) Only five more degrees to go.

In other news, I saw my orthopedic surgeon this morning, and he is referring me to a hand specialist for why my fingers still won't move correctly. I want to be able to type. I figure it can't hurt to see another specialist, and I might as well get it taken care of in 2024 when I already have such a large outlay in terms of medical expenses. I get to call that office tomorrow. Otherwise, I guess my recovery is happening at the pace it's supposed to, because I made another appointment for three months from now—with no x-rays before the next appointment!

This Saturday I get to go to a memorial service in the foothills, and I get to take either Uber or Lyft to get there. It's 29 miles from my house. I probably could get out of going due to the extraordinary effort and expense involved, but I really want to go. I'm hoping that Saturday afternoon at 1:00 is not a very popular time to take a ride-sharing service. I checked the cost (just to see what it would be) to go from my house to the location of the service on a Friday at 3pm, and it was $45. 

This morning I ordered some stress balls (to work my hand muscles) and a ten-pack of underwear from Amazon, because somebody has been chomping on several pairs of my underwear. 

The temperature has now dropped 2°. I'm still hot. 

[scenicdesign71]

I feel guilty saying that my week was low-key lovely, with almost nothing that would qualify as a serious annoyance (let alone any catastrophes, for once).

Monday we were at the studio/prison/hospital, and then the rest of the week was all on location — but the weather has been so freakishly pleasant for August in NYC (low sixties to low eighties, sunny and breezy) that it was a pleasure to be outside in it all day and/or night, even for decidedly-indoorsy me.  There weren't even any unduly challenging cart-schlepping situations, although I still feel like the tires on my small but ridiculously heavy cart could use a little more air.

Tuesday and Wednesday were spent at (or around, mostly outside while the core crew filmed inside) a neighborhoody tavern/pizzeria and a lavishly comfy suburbanish diner, respectively.

Thursday and Friday we returned to our hospital-exterior location (several miles from the former prison complex where we're filming most of our interiors), a once-grand edifice from the 1930s that's been gradually crumbling into picturesque disrepair for decades — though I'm told it still houses one floor of psychiatric patients, as well as an insurance company and ...some other business or organization that I can't remember at the moment.   In the meantime, unused interior spaces — and the building's decrepit yet still-impressive facade — have been used for various film & TV productions over the past decade; in fact, Law & Order's scenic crew was there alongside ours the other day, preparing to film scenes for their show in an adjacent part of the building next week — only to discover that the hallways of our respective "sets" actually intersected one another(!).  They agreed to let us paint over the hallway intersection in "our" colors for our shoot this week, and then they'll repaint the relevant 10-foot span of wall in their own colors next week, in time for their shoot.  As it turned out, "our" scenes actually took place at night in what's meant to be a long-disused and locked-up old wing of the hospital — its dusty main hall relegated to a graveyard of old institutional furniture, mountains of discarded files and obsolete medical technology — so we ended up masking-out that deep-background intersection with black curtains anyway; on-camera, under shadowy horror-movie lighting, it appears as if the darkened hallway just recedes infinitely into inky blackness.  Next month, we'll return for a daytime flashback to the hospital's postwar glory days, and I'm guessing we'll need to repaint that intersection yet again; hopefully by then the episodic L&O will be finished with this location, although their blue (possibly police-blue?) dado color makes me wonder whether they're using it as precinct corridors, to which they might return.

The work itself has been a little busier than usual, but gratifyingly so. On Monday while we were at the studio (and for most of the preceding week there), whenever I wasn't doing anything for the camera's immediate needs — which was most of the time — I was drawing dozens of pencil sketches for one of our characters who's an aspiring artist.  This coming Monday we'll be filming in her room, where she's ostensibly hung them all over the walls, so I'll get to see what's been made of them while we were out on location this week, between graphics-department tweaking and perhaps some watercolor washes added by my scenic colleagues in the shop.  (While we're there, I'll also make sure and pump up those tires at some point before we head back out for the final block of location work in September, which should make the cart easier both to push and to steer).

They feed us at work, of course, so it's been pretty much work, commute, and sleep.  But to cap off the week, I won a tidy 600 bucks on a $20 outlay in yesterday's playing-card raffle with the crew; I haven't participated in this Friday tradition for the past several weeks, but yesterday I was feeling lucky (accurately, as it turned out) after such a pleasant workweek.

My followup appointment with the colorectal surgeon, two Tuesdays ago, was possibly the fastest doctor visit I've ever experienced: after getting lost in the hospital, which made me ten minutes late for an 11am appointment, I was still in and out by 11:35am.  The day before, I had received an alarming notice from my insurance company, saying they were rejecting my claim for the hospital stay (!!!), but the doc assured me that this was a typical bureaucratic glitch that would be remedied quickly and easily, at least insofar as those two words have any meaning whatsoever where bureaucracy is involved.  I'm choosing to believe him, for now — his advice was simply to ignore it for the time being — but if the claim hasn't been un-rejected by the end of this month (i.e. the end of this coming week), I'll start making some calls.

[KathyB]

The day before, I had received an alarming notice from my insurance company, saying they were rejecting my claim for the hospital stay (!!!), but the doc assured me that this was a typical bureaucratic glitch that would be remedied quickly and easily, at least insofar as those two words have any meaning whatsoever where bureaucracy is involved.  I'm choosing to believe him, for now — his advice was simply to ignore it for the time being — but if the claim hasn't been un-rejected by the end of this month (i.e. the end of this coming week), I'll start making some calls.

I got one of those lovely letters from the insurance company saying that my hospital stay was "not medically necessary."  I called the insurance company the next day and was told they had no record of that claim being rejected and no Explanation of Benefits with that claim number on it either. I was told to wait a couple of weeks, to see if an EOB came through, officially rejecting the claim. If so, I could file an appeal. That was several months ago.  I've kept the instructions on how to file an appeal, but I'm assuming it was just some big mess-up.

[scenicdesign71]

Your experience sounds similar to mine, Kathy, though if my doc's reaction is to be trusted, these kinds of "big mess-ups" are as common as weeds.  Which sounds about right: I believe the billing on at least one of my mom's hospital stays went through all kinds of similar contortions with her insurance before eventually sorting themselves out.

Update: when I log onto my insurance company's website, my "History" does specify the claim as having been "Denied," with each itemized part of the bill labeled as to its price; an alphanumeric code for "not medically necessary"; any relevant "discounts," whatever that means (regardless, it's 0.00 in every case); and the amount the insurer will pay (ditto, 0.00) — leaving the entire cost as "[My] Responsibility".  It's been saying this for the past couple of weeks.

And until just now, the Explanation of Benefits had always come up "temporarily unavailable" every time I tried to look at it.  But today, the EOB did finally come up (the trick seems to be hitting the button twice!), itemized just as on the History page with the price for each service (same as before), the same "not medically necessary" code, my "discount" (now not zero but rather, the exact amount of each charge), and the insurer's payment (zero, as before).  The upshot being that, according to the EOB, while this all may still not be deemed medically necessary (by them — though the doctor would sharply disagree, and will, if it comes to that), I now have a bunch of mysterious "discounts" which zero everything out, such that neither I nor the insurer owe anyone a penny.  (Literally, "You Pay" and "[Insurer] Pays" both say 0.00 for each item and for the grand total on the EOB — while, on the Claim History page, that (identical) breakdown and its grand total still insist that the insurer pays nothing but that I, with 0.00 in discounts, must cover everything).

I do love a good discount, though I also like knowing what it's for and how it works — i.e. whether there is, as I fully expect here, a catch somewhere.

The doctor's reassuringly sane eye-rolling contempt for medical bureaucracy endeared him to me the other week, and that feeling is only growing as this nonsense continues to unspool.  Since my insurer now appears to be violently ambivalent as to whether I owe everything or nothing — an improvement over the past few weeks, when they seemed certain I owed everything — maybe I will follow your lead, Kathy, as well as the doc's original recommendation, and wait a little longer before making any calls.  If nothing else, I'm perversely curious as to what Kafkaesque whimsy they'll come up with next.