> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When I had my two heart attacks back
> in the middle 1990's, I lived in the Chicago area and thought the
> bills from Northshore Medical Center were pretty awful. There were
> angioplasties each time and other treatment as well. But when I got
> here to Kansas and had a brain aneurysm (which is more or less a
> stroke but not entirely), when I got out of Stormont-Vail Medical
> Center in Topeka and the associated Kansas Rehabiitation Hospital
> (yes, the nearest brain surgeon was a 125 mile ambulance ride going
> down I-70) I got a bill for *three hundred thousand dollars*. Ever
> had a hospital or doctor bill with a bottom line of $300,000.00 ?
> Not bad, I guess for someone who is comotose for over two months and
> in emergency rehabilitation for another month after that. Add about
> another $35,000 for a year's stay in a nursing home. How can anyone
> afford to get sick these days? PAT]
FWIW, you are still with us and able to share and participate. Surely
that time is worth a good deal of the sum even if you didn't have to
pay it all yourself.
David
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As I slowly pulled myself back together
in the Kansas Rehabilition Hospital (for starters) and in the nursing
home over the year following that, there were a few times I wondered
why I was still around. As I began to acclimate myself to being at
home finally, a disabled older person who has to have almost daily
attention, those thoughts of 'why am I still around' occur now and
then. Two years ago, I filed my tax return with the state of Kansas
and claimed my (refund) due to 'Homestead Tax Exemption'. Kansas does
not require old people to pay tax on their real property (my house and
land) or any food sales tax (a standard amount is refunded for that if
you are old and disabled.) You pay it as called for, then file for
a refund of it all together each January and get it back as a refund
check a few months later.
Would you believe they tripped me up when the state auditor's office
sent me a warrant due for ambulance service from the City of Junction
City, KS for ambulance service the night of my aneurysm and that
l-o-n-g (over a hundred miles) ride down I-70 from Junction City to
Topeka where a brain surgeon was located. The auditor's office was
merely a middle-man, collecting on outstanding warrants from various
municipal governments. I told the JC people that Kansas SRS had paid
the rest of the 300,000.00 bill and they should have paid Junction
City for the ambulance service as well. The state auditor 'graciously'
offset the warrant with my Homestead tax refund, but eventually the
folks in Junction City backed down and okayed the release of the
funds and I guess submitted their ambulance bill to Kansas SRS instead.
Junction City has a 'relationship' with Fort Riley, where I was
actually living and working to supply them with ambulance as needed
and medical service from the Junction City Community Hospital.
Between the Fort Riley army medics and the JC hospital, neither of
them could come up with a brain surgeon (most small towns cannot),
so it was off to Topeka with me in the back of the wagon, two Army
MP's and a watchful nurse from the hospital looking after me. I
joked on the way, asking the nurse if they were going to 'pronounce
me' before they got to Topeka; she looked sort of aghast at that and
said she hoped they would not have to. Naturally they all -- US Army,
City of Junction City ambulance and the hospital nurse wanted to
get paid for their efforts. The Army and the hospital all submitted
their bills to Kansas SRS in a 'timely way' and got their money. For
some reason, City of Junction City did not get their paper work in
until almost two years later when I submitted the Homestead Tax refund
form on my mother's house in Independence, then they decided they
wanted their money also, when SRS said the bills left (at that point)
had not been submitted in a 'timely fashion'. It finally all got
resolved. PAT]
David (FlyLikeAnEagle@United.Com)