It All Comes Down To Money

When I reported on John Hopkins Medical's interest in my case, things seemed to be going along swimmingly. Then it hit a snag: my insurance company which can't seem to make up its mind about whether or not they want to pay for any examinations and such performed at JHM.

I sent my insurance company an email yesterday, informing them that their dallying is causing my PTSD to get triggered again, leading to very unpleasant PTSD attacks, as I prefer to call them. I made it clear that they need to make up their mind and take care of the payment preferably within a week.

As for the costs involved, for this Medical Second Opinion it is US$800 for the report plus one physician with US$550 added for every additional physician required. I have ran up far higher costs with countless hospital visits here in the Netherlands already, and these didn't result in anything useful.

My psychotherapist also sent an email in response to yesterday's email to me and my insurance company, in which he firmly supported the points I made in my email. This should be helpful in convincing my insurance company (Unive) to hurry up as there is no point in delaying this. As my therapist pointed out in his email, he can happily bill Unive for countless more hours during the next years, or I can have things taken care of within this year at JHM. Seems like an easy choice, right?

As for my experiences with JHM so far, they have been exceedingly polite in their email correspondence, are very communicative and responsive and basically I have not a single complaint about them at this point. Many times they have said that they consider this to be a very complicated case, something no Dutch hospital so far has admitted, let alone considered it motivation to put more people on it, as JHM has mentioned, or even elevate it to the Medical Directors.

That they do want to see money up-front isn't that weird, that's what this world runs on after all. I just hope that Unive understands soon that letting me proceed with JHM is also to their (financial) benefit.


Maya