Dr. Hand-In-My-Pocket

I had to go to the dentist today for a cleaning. They claim that they discovered a small cavity and now I have to go back next week to have it filled. They also took dental xrays, because according to the hygienist it has been a year since my last xray. Coincidentally, my insurance pays for one set of xrays per year. Imagine that. My dentist is running a racket as far as I can tell. I originally signed up with him because he was on my insurance's preferred provider list, meaning that he had set prices that he agreed to with the insurance company. This also meant he agreed not to charge me anymore than the insurance company schedule. For instance, if the insurance company negotiated a price of $500 for a particular procedure, that's all he could charge. My company would pay him 80% and I would pay 20%. He got a total of $500, even if he was charging self-pay patients more, which he was. So what this yahoo has done is to tell the insurance company to buzz off, a fact I discovered the hard way. Penny, the world's least competent dental front desk person, broke the news to me a while back. They will still file the charges with the insurance company, but they are not bound to the price schedule. I guess Dr. Yahoo figured out that any loss of patients from this change, would be made up for by raising the prices 25%, to his self-pay level. I recently had to have a three-crown bridge put in. The price that the insurance company allowed for the bridge was $1560. That's for three tiny crowns that some guy made in a lab somewhere for about ten bucks each. What Dr. Yahoo paid the lab I don't know, but I will bet it was less than a hundred bucks. What Yahoo charged me I do know, a cool $2550. On bridge work my insurance policy only pays 50% of the $1560 or $780, leaving me on the hook with Yahoo for the difference of $1770. That is obscene. What this change has allowed Yahoo to do is to put all his employees, himself included, on thirty-two hour weeks. The office is open five days a week, but they take turns being off, half on Monday and half on Friday. Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of the shortened work week, I just don't want to finance it. So, I guess I will be in the market for a new dentist soon, one that still contracts with my insurance company. On a more cheerful note, the days here are now in the seventies and eighties and the nights in the low fifties. It is a great time to be a gardener. I put out more annuals today to spice up the patio. Hopefully, they will bloom into December. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky