How I Didn’t Get My Wisdom Teeth Out Today

This whole ordeal has felt like an epic battle to me.  I’m sure it will be terribly borring for you guys, but it’s my blog and this is what’s on my mind   Feel free to skip down to the trivia question at the bottom!

Back in April my dentist told me I needed to go ahead and get my wisdom teeth pulled and sent me off to an oral surgeon.  This is no suprise to me, I’ve known I’d need to have them pulled since I was about 10… it was always just a matter of when.  Apparently now is the appropiate time.  Whatever.

I meet with Oral Surgeon #1 early in May.  Liked him a lot.  He says the lower left one will be a difficult extraction but is confident he can handle it.  I get out of the consultation to schedule things with the receptionist and she tells me that I owe $168 for the consultation and I’ll owe just under $1600 for the procedure on the day of.  My jaw just about hit the floor.  Apparently my insurance won’t cover the cost of the consultation and x-rays and the procedure it’s self maxes out my annual benefits.  (I actually did get reimbursed for the $168, but they didn’t mention that possibility then)

I’m kind of in sticker shock at this point.  My husband paid $650 for his wisdom teeth.  Granted we have different insurance but I wasn’t expecting it to be over $1000.  I get back to work and start looking into my dental insurance.  We have 2 options for dental insurance an indemnity policy (if you don’t know what that means, I’ll explain the important part here in a min) or a DMO.  I had the indemnity policy because that’s the one I needed to see the dentist I like, didn’t think anything of it.  With that policy I wasn’t going to get more than $1500 covered no matter where I went or what I did.

I start looking into the DMO policy because open enrollment was comming up July 1 and I figured I could wait that long if the other policy was going to be better.  I call Oral Surgeon #1’s office and ask them what it would cost me on the other policy.  She tells me that she can’t give me any information until she can call the new insurance carrier and verify benefits, which she can’t do until after the policy goes effective, but she knows they contract with the new carrier.  Great!  I switch carriers, move the appointment to a week after the effective date (today actually) and continue on my merry way.

I call Oral Surgeon #1’s office again last Thursday, give them all the new insurance information and ask how much will be due out of pocket.  I finally get a call back on Monday (with the holiday thrown in there I’m not suprised it took that long but I’m not happy about it either) and she says they don’t contract with my new carrier (huh?) and there’s no benefits at all.  They put it under my medical insurance and tell me it’s going to be $2600 due on the day of.  WTF!!!!!!

There was some question about possibly getting reimbursed for a portion of the procedure and I spent 2 days figuring out wether that was a possibility or not and finially figure out that it doesn’t matter because even if I could get reimbursed it would only be about $700, and I’d still have to pay $2600 out of pocket.  Not going to happen.

It’s Tuesday afternoon now and I decide to punt.  I call my dentist with a list of all 4 oral surgeons in the network for my new dental insurance to get a recommendation and they send me to Oral Surgeon #2.  I call them and make an appointment for a consultation, making it clear that I’d like to get it done this week (The Hubby is doing a lot of traveling in the next 2 months and it’s going to be the middle of August before he’s home again to take care of me and I already have the time off).  She gets me in for a consultation on Wednesday but can’t book the surgery because she doesn’t know how much time to schedule.  She tells me that he has availability on Thursday and Friday though.  Fine.

I get in there yesterday and he’s much more concerned about the lower left tooth.  #2 wants me to get a CT scan to get a better look at the structure of the nerve (#1 mentioned the same issue but was just going to see what it looked like once he got in there).  Fabulous, another insurance battle.  I mention wanting to get this taken care of this week and he tells me that’s not possible, he’s fully booked.  At this point i’m just wondering how many lies I’m going to be told by receptionists in this whole ordeal (I realize that no one has really lied to me, everyone is just trying to do their job, but in that moment I felt like I was being put through the ringer).  He says he’ll do the procedure with out the CT, but if I can swing it he’d like it.  Fine, I’ll look into it.

I get out to the receptionist… again… and schedule for August 13th because that’s the next available time that I’ll have someone to stay with me for 24-48 hours.  She tells me $905 will be my out of pocket cost, higher than I was expecting, but better than my other options.  I still dont’ know if I’m going to do the CT… still don’t know how much that will cost me.

Today I have mixed emotions.  I was expecting to be off of work today.  I have no plans for the weekend because I was expecting to be knocked out and taking Vicodin for several days.  This whole thing feels like a lot of hurry up and wait.  I’m ready to have it over and done with.  I guess it will be over and done with in another 6 weeks.

Trivia

“Did Doogie Houser just steal my f@$*ing car?”  Name that movie!