Do you read your medical bills? How about the "explanation of benefits" from your health insurance company? Granted, those latter are more like a "confusion of benefits" than an explanation, but let's let that go for now.
Do you read your medical bills? How about the "explanation of benefits" from your health insurance company? Granted, those latter are more like a "confusion of benefits" than an explanation, but let's let that go for now.
Posted at 01:21 PM in $$$, Medical Billing/Insurance Woes, Medicare, WSHIP | Permalink | Comments (1)
Technorati Tags: cancer, cost of treatment, medical bills, Medicare, SCCA, Swedish Cancer Institute, WSHIP
This news story, which says that medical bills are responsible for 60 percent of the bankruptcies in the United States, will be met with a heartfelt "DUH!" by most of my readers. After all, we are living this.
Posted at 07:47 AM in $$$, Medical Billing/Insurance Woes | Permalink | Comments (0)
Yesterday's New York Times had a good story about cancer patients struggling to pay for chemo drugs that come in pill form.
Posted at 10:55 AM in $$$, Cancer News, Drug Companies, Medical Billing/Insurance Woes, Medicare, Tykerb | Permalink | Comments (2)
Technorati Tags: cancer, chemo, insurance companies, Medicare Part D, New York Times, Part B, pill form, Tykerb
It looks like it's time to organize a boycott of the Walgreen drugstore chain, folks.
Posted at 05:14 PM in $$$, Cancer News, Medical Billing/Insurance Woes, Patient Privacy/HIPAA | Permalink | Comments (2)
Technorati Tags: Bartell, boycott Walgreen, Medicaid, patient privacy, prescription drugs, Walgreen, Washington state
Teri, the Cheeky Librarian, e-mailed me about Wellsphere last night. Apparently, she got the same e-mail that many of us have received--asking us to let Wellsphere use the entire contents of our blogs: FOR FREE.
You can bet the next time I get a drug question from a reader I'm going to ask for help. If you do have questions you'd like to ask our expert, just send them to me and I'll forward them on: jeanne.sather@gmail.com
As I mentioned in an earlier post today, I had a voicemail message from an administrator at Northwest Hospital, where I go for cancer treatment, saying she wanted to talk to me about something I'd written on my blog.
Posted at 04:23 PM in $$$, Assertive Cancer Patient?, Medical Billing/Insurance Woes | Permalink | Comments (0)
Technorati Tags: cancer, charity care, collections agency, lawsuit, Northwest Hospital
I'm going to be doing some more lobbying, this time on the national level, to help get legislation passed that would bring generic forms of wildly expensive cancer drugs (among others) to market sooner.
Posted at 03:24 PM in $$$, Aranesp, Cancer Treatment, Chemo, Drug Companies, Lobbying, Medical Billing/Insurance Woes, Metastatic Cancer, Tykerb | Permalink | Comments (3)
Technorati Tags: cancer, cost, drug prices, drugs, Essential Action, generic cancer drugs, lobbying
Washington state has a charity care law that requires hospitals (but not individual doctors or, weirdly enough, cancer centers) to write off the bills of people whose income is below 200 percent of the federal poverty level.
Posted at 11:17 AM in $$$, Charity Care, Medical Billing/Insurance Woes | Permalink | Comments (0)
Technorati Tags: cancer, charity care, Northwest Hospital, Washington state
Yesterday, I had an update from Megan--she's still fighting, but the news is not good.
Yesterday, a 36-year-old woman who has metastatic breast cancer e-mailed me and asked for my help.