Long Sigh. Thank You, God.

When I went into the ER for the last miscarriage I went into a bit of a shock or something due to a loss of blood or something. The ER doctor tried to stop the bleeding with an exam, some drugs, and finally called the on-call OB. The OB came down and confirmed a need for a D&C. Considering I had almost blacked out and was in a state of emotional and spiritual shock that I had just experienced my second miscarriage it never occurred to me to ask, "Excuse me, Doctor, but are you covered by my insurance?"
Well, turns out he wasn't. On top of having to pay for 10% of the pathology and the drugs and the hospital stay and the on and on and on, I got a bill for the OB. I was going to have to pay for my own D&C! How sick is that? The doctor was $800.00! The negotiated price was $550.00!
I went through the billing office, then to the insurance, back to the billing, then to the insurance, and back to the billing. The insurance was claiming it was the billing that needed to change to the coding. The billing office said it was the insurance, because they had already signed on a negotiated price. I thought that was rather absurd, because I hadn't been able to explain the situation before they signed on the price.
Thank God we do have the money to pay all these bills, but it was just a pain.
Anyway, the insurance said I would have to write an appeal and send it via snail-mail. The billing office didn't sound very hopeful, but said she would write an appeal as well just to see what happened.
The next day I printed out my paper, and didn't even finish it thanks to the loss of words and the blots of ink. I got on maybe a day or two later to print out another application. The doctor's bill had already decreased! I got a recite in the mail last week to confirm that the insurance was covering the doctor as if he was out-of-network.
Today I get a somber message from the billing office with "news". I went all hot and shaky while calling them back. However, no matter the fear, she confirmed that the insurance listened to her appeal and will be covering all but $50.15!
Sigh. Whew! I told her, "Praise the Lord! Send me the bill!"