Posted by Kromey at 1:33pm Jan 21 '10If you'll recall, I'd mentioned previously that my employer is dropping insurance coverage for employees to save money. This is what prompted my search for individual coverage, which lead to my decision that I must start losing weight now due to my premium being $35/mo higher than what I was quoted thanks to my weight.
Well, now the story continues: I went in yesterday for a surgical consult with my oral surgeon. (I say "my", but this is the first time I've seen him. Or any surgeon, really.) Need to have my 4 wisdom teeth removed (my orthodontist said I only had 3 wisdom teeth to begin with, that one was missing; both my dentist and my oral surgeon disagree with him, though), plus a 5th tooth that has become internally resorbed (that's the condition that typically requires a root canal) but is too far along to be saved.
So get through that, and I get handed an estimate of the cost of the procedure: $2555. That's actually about half what I'd been expecting (although come to think of it, I have no idea where I got the notion that it'd be $5000), but still a large sum of cash. They had queried my old insurance (my employer-supplied insurance that's now terminated), and told me that they would cover $1250 (my annual maximum), leaving me to cover the remaining $1305. That's not too bad, really, but unfortunately that's not my current coverage.
So they just called me back after talking to my new insurance company. Since I've not had this coverage for 12 months yet, they will only pay 20% of what they would "normally" cover. This comes out to $255.50 for this procedure. That leaves me covering $2299.50 out of pocket. And this doesn't include whatever I'll be responsible for from my dentist who needs to section my bridge (i.e. cut it apart so that the internally resorbed tooth, which is one of the anchors for my bridge, can then be extracted), to say nothing of the fact that we haven't even begun to discuss options of what to do about this new gap in my teeth!!
This fucking sucks. $2300 is a lot of money. And it's really only the start. :-(
Well, now the story continues: I went in yesterday for a surgical consult with my oral surgeon. (I say "my", but this is the first time I've seen him. Or any surgeon, really.) Need to have my 4 wisdom teeth removed (my orthodontist said I only had 3 wisdom teeth to begin with, that one was missing; both my dentist and my oral surgeon disagree with him, though), plus a 5th tooth that has become internally resorbed (that's the condition that typically requires a root canal) but is too far along to be saved.
So get through that, and I get handed an estimate of the cost of the procedure: $2555. That's actually about half what I'd been expecting (although come to think of it, I have no idea where I got the notion that it'd be $5000), but still a large sum of cash. They had queried my old insurance (my employer-supplied insurance that's now terminated), and told me that they would cover $1250 (my annual maximum), leaving me to cover the remaining $1305. That's not too bad, really, but unfortunately that's not my current coverage.
So they just called me back after talking to my new insurance company. Since I've not had this coverage for 12 months yet, they will only pay 20% of what they would "normally" cover. This comes out to $255.50 for this procedure. That leaves me covering $2299.50 out of pocket. And this doesn't include whatever I'll be responsible for from my dentist who needs to section my bridge (i.e. cut it apart so that the internally resorbed tooth, which is one of the anchors for my bridge, can then be extracted), to say nothing of the fact that we haven't even begun to discuss options of what to do about this new gap in my teeth!!
This fucking sucks. $2300 is a lot of money. And it's really only the start. :-(
Ugh - Kromey