I can’t speak for you, but I can hardly wait to pay my medical bills. I accumulate all of the paperwork in a big file so that I can enjoy this in one big blast of reconciliation entertainment. Heck it’s almost as much fun as a colonoscopy.

Really – whatever hell Dante thought of as 9 circles is NOTHING compared to the morass of trying to reconcile who got paid what, what I owe and when I’m supposed to pay it (the last one is always – 3 weeks ago).

Which, despite advanced degrees in statistics, I am unable to do. This necessitates a call to the medical billing office, who, under the Geneva Convention, are allowed to hate you. I feel for them, and believe that someone needs to sponsor a major concert event called Band-Aid to raise money for their therapy.

But on this occasion, I made 2 phone calls.

First to my doctor’s billing service. It turns out that they are transferring to new software. Poor Brittany has to deal not only with me but new software that is designed to make things easier – you know, like “AI”.

Then I call with 4 bills, on 4 account numbers, for 4 different amounts, on 4 different billing dates going back a year. I could hear her whimpering on the line. But we went through all 4 bills, one at a time, and paid them all using 4 separate transactions, one at a time, and cleared all of our bills. There was a sigh of relief from us both.

Then this is our conversation:
Brittany: “Well, sir, is there anything else we can do today?”
Me: “God, I hope not.”

The laughter that she broke into was long, loud, and had the quality of a hostage being released from a Siberian prison.

And then… Not 10 minutes later, I have to call our insurer ( whose initials are BC, as in, “our systems are from 100 BC”).

You see, I had a colonoscopy (always a fun day) that was to be covered. So, you can imagine my surprise that their Explanation of Benefits says that for a 100% covered service I now owe $5,100.

Clearly, this requires an Explanation of the Explanation of Benefits. Fortunately, the EOB includes a 1 page boilerplate in 15 different languages explaining that their staff is there to explain your explanation of benefits. So, I will call.

I get a very nice person named Stephanie. She sees the bill, and makes clear that this cannot be right. Places me on hold, I get to boogie out to the music, and eventually comes back to say that they’ll look into fixing it over the next 3 weeks (which is why I’m always 3 weeks behind on payments).

To which I remarked:
Me: “Given that this is for a colonoscopy, when I saw the bill I thought that I was getting it up the…….ANYWAY….. Thank you for your help.”
Stephanie (not missing a beat): “I thought you were going to say that we were full of….ANYWAY….. have a nice Valentines Day.”

I laughed loud, long, and with the quality of a hostage being released from a Siberian prison.