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The original was posted on /r/extremelyinfuriating by /u/QueerQwerty on 2023-08-11 03:18:22+00:00.

It’s so I can maybe smell and taste again, and breathe through my nose. Almost set my house on fire cooking, because I couldn’t smell the billowing smoke coming from my stovetop. That prompted me going in to find out all the damage I had to my face, from hammers and rakes and petal pipes and elbows, and everything else my brother and dad did to me when I was a little kid.

Today, I get a call from the finance department of the hospital at 1445, to tell me my insurance hasn’t approved/authorized it yet. After numerous frantic calls and messages through several apps for the hospital, the surgical team, and my insurance, as of 1630…I’m left with a surgery scheduled for 0830 tomorrow, an estimate for $52,000 out of pocket (with a “generous” 45% discount), scheduled vacation from work through Wednesday to get paid, and radio silence.

Wife took vacation for tomorrow to take me there and home. She has very little vacation, and I have less left than what I just blew. Also towards the end of my maximum out of pocket, so if this gets pushed to next year, I end up paying $10,500 instead of $1100.

I just want to know what happened. I want to know how this didn’t come up until the evening before the surgery. I want to know why they didn’t realize there was a problem, and didn’t have someone on the phone frantically trying to get my insurance to authorize, until this afternoon. This was scheduled two months ago. This is with one of the massive hospital networks in my area. My health insurance is one of the massive insurance companies.

I tried to cancel the surgery, and because it’s so close, I have to call a number to do so. I call the number, and they’re closed, I have to call an hour before the surgery when they open again. I try to call my insurance company from the back of my insurance card, and it goes through the audio prompts to a MOTHERF___ING PERSONAL VOICEMAIL. For like a random employee.

I’m so tired of healthcare. I’m assuming my insurance company is doing this to try to get me to back out of the surgery and never reschedule it. But I’m livid with the hospital network, too. Hell, maybe my insurance company is doing this because the hospital network didn’t do things within the correct timeframe.

At one point, I had the hospital’s billing person, the person who first alerted me of the issue, telling me that the person in charge of doing the preauthorization was telling them not to inform me of what was going on until they could work it out with my insurance and call me. The billing person said they had to tell me, and that they’d be leaving for a week at 1630. The person from preauth never called me.

This feels so much like a scam. I don’t even know if I want to work with this hospital network anymore, I’m considering going to the other huge one and getting a second opinion and different surgeon through them.

I’m so, so angry. I don’t even know what to do or who to talk to.