Why, yes, I am about to discuss intimate financial matters with the whole world. But someone out there in the whole world is going to have the answer I need. So, here goes.
As you recall, I have health insurance in which the first $500 of my medical expenses is covered and then I cover the next $2,500, and the insurance company kicks back in at $3,000.
This is a great plan if you only go to the doctor twice a year, because you basically pay nothing (except for your regular monthly costs, which, for some reason, don’t count towards your $2,500, but oh well) to see the doctor.
If, however, you have an x-ray (paid for by insurance) and then a CT scan and four doctors’ appointments in a month and now out-patient surgery, you might be looking around the house for $2,500.
Fair enough. I was bitter, but I really do believe that, if this all had not gone wrong, I would have felt like I made the genius insurance choice so what can you do?
It still doesn’t alleviate the $2,500 I have to come up with.
Okay, but internet here’s where I need your help. So, I regularly get these statements from a company called WageWorks and I regularly don’t bother to even look at them because the one time I opened the envelope and saw a balance of $500 in there, I assumed that was the $500 that went towards the first $500 of my insurance. I’ve just been tossing those puppies ever since.
But now that I’ve used up that $500, I was curious to see what the statement looked like, to see if it matched my online statement. Yes, I’d been assuming that WageWorks was some subsidiary of Aetna.
So, I open up the Monthly Account Statement and my balance is $925.00.
I don’t think I have to tell you how I’ve been sitting here all “What the fuck?”
Where has this money come from? Can I use it towards the $2,500? I mean, America, I don’t think I have to tell you how much I’d rather be trying to come up with $1,575 than $2,500. Who is WageWorks? And how have I gotten this far in life being as big an idiot as I am?
Clearly, I’m going to have to call them this week, discover who they are, and see what the deal is.
It claims that it is automatically set up to pay my health plan claims, but does my health plan know about them?
It’s all very strange.
It’s funny, the other day I was at Qdoba and I ran into a woman who used to work in my building and she asked me if I was still at our mutual employer and I said yes and she asked me how long I’d been there and I said “Since 99” and she laughed and said, “Yep, once you start using those benefits, they know they’ve got you hooked.”
I thought about that last night, as I was staring at this statement claiming I have $925 to use towards healthcare. If that’s true, it is the best news I’ve gotten all week and it makes me feel a strange loyalty towards my employer, like, “yeah, you might have only paid me $19,000 a year when I first took this job and you let the law students park in my lot and you are a terrible bureaucracy that is impossible to navigate, but when I was worried about a $2,500 medical bill right in the middle of the holidays, more than a third of it magically showed up in my mailbox.”
Though, in all fairness, they may have been taking this money out of my check for years. Who knows?
Not me, because I am an idiot.
Tiny Cat Pants 