In _____ I trust

Today was a hard day.

Once again I was confronted with and convicted about an area of sin in my life.  The fact that I used the word again doesn't say much about me, since it indicates I've been down this road before and somehow still continue to miss the off-ramp.

When am I going to learn to trust -- to really trust -- God?

After everything we went through last year, especially last summer, how could I have reacted the way I did today?

It's more than slightly ironic that US currency bears the phrase In God We Trust, because, in my most honest moments, I have to admit that all too often I place my trust and security in money.  My sense of well-being and peace rises and falls with the balance in my checking and savings accounts.

And today trust and peace were nowhere to be found.

Over the past year we've received many, many bills from the Convenient Care, ER, hospital, doctors, and labs.  As the bills poured in, the portion we had to pay grew smaller and the amount that insurance paid grew larger.  Eventually we got to the point where insurance was covering almost 100% of the charge.

But a few days ago, we received a bill from the hospital for lab work -- $850 worth of lab work -- that insurance refused to cover.  I couldn't imagine why our insurance wouldn't pay at least a portion of this bill.  I also couldn't remember having incurred this particular charge.  I was certain that all of our medical expenses were submitted before the end of 2011.  This charge was for January 3, 2012 -- a new billing year and, worse yet, a new insurance company.

G called the hospital and was able to determine that they only had information for our old insurance.  He gave them our new info and they said they would resubmit the claim.  The whole time he was patiently on the phone with a very patient billing representative, I was raving like a maniac in the background.  I kept hissing at him that the charge had to be for a 2011 procedure that the old insurance needed to honor -- no matter whether the charges were submitted in '11 or '12.

Honestly I was convinced that the charges had been posted to our account in error.  The billing employee said the lab work was coded to M's gastroenterologist.  M had lab work done prior to an appointment with Dr. Z on 12/21, but I couldn't remember anything more after her appointment.

When G got off the phone with the hospital, I called the billing department for Dr. Z.  The woman I talked with was very nice and assured me that we had a zero balance with their office.  She couldn't find anything on her end that would indicate outstanding charges for lab work.  So obviously, the problem was with the hospital's record keeping.

This time I called the hospital.  I don't think I spoke with the same person that G did, but she was pleasant and patient while I recounted, amazingly, in a reasoned and rational manner, my confusion concerning this huge lab charge.  The woman (wisely) listened as I explained my problem.  She may have asked a few questions, but mostly she listened.

As I talked to her, a nagging possibility began to work its way to the front of my brain.  Had Dr. Z given M an order for more lab work to be completed before she returned to Purdue for spring semester?  I asked the hospital billing rep if she could hold for a moment.  Then I asked G if he had possibly taken M to the convenient care for blood work shortly after New Year's.  He thought for a moment and then admitted he was pretty sure that he had.  By this point, I was pretty sure that he had also.

Before M's pre-Christmas appointment, I took her to a small lab for her blood draw.  We ended up waiting a long time and M had complained.  Based on the results from that workup and M's conversation with Dr. Z, he asked her to have more lab work done before she went back to school.  M said she wouldn't go back to the "slow" lab, so G took her to the convenient care instead.  Somehow both G and I had forgotten all about that procedure.

I returned to the phone and apologized to the woman at the hospital for the confusion on our end, made some lame joke about needing to have better communication in my home, thanked her for her time and patience, and then hung up the phone.

Unfortunately all of the patience and reasonableness that I had been able to extend to the billing representatives at the the doctor's office and the hospital vanished when I got off the phone and turned to my husband.  I didn't scream at G and I wasn't angry with him, but I was angry and frustrated with the insurance situation.  I ranted about how unfair it was that this charge fell in a new billing year and with a new company.  I complained about the outrageous cost of health care in general and these lab charges in particular.  I swore and took God's name in vain.  Then I broke down sobbing that there was no way we would be able to pay the entire amount of the bill (because a new insurance company wasn't going to understand, wouldn't care, and wouldn't pay for what they probably thought were just some random, out-of-the blue tests that M had done for the heck of it). And finally I wailed that because of all of the above, we were going to be broke and penniless.