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Filed Under
Denial Of Claim
Posted September 11, 2006
Due to spiraling health care costs, we have elected not to pay for Emergency Room services rendered on the 16th of February. In this letter, we hope to explain your coverage, and suggest how you might keep costs down in the future.
The bill that you sent us charges a separate fee for using the Emergency Room after ten pm. Usually, late-night charges are incurred for attendance in desirable locales, such as the cover charge at the Viper Room. The Emergency Room does not fall under this category, because I would rather have been anywhere else at the hour in question (attached sheet lists preferred venues). A late night appearance at the hospital does not get you written up in Page Six, unless your child has a skull fracture and a celebrity mother. To defray costs, you might consider hiring staff who view night work a perk (i.e. Vampires, insomniacs), or close down after ten like most other family-friendly venues.
Your bill includes a fifty dollar fee for aspirin. There is a Rite Aid down the block, where one can buy aspirin at a much lower cost; prices are as low as $10 for 500 capsules. Since your wholesale cost, without markup, must be $25,000 per 500 capsule bottle, we are obliged to inform you that you are getting fleeced. Walmart is even cheaper than Rite Aid, though farther away, and gas prices being what they are, it evens out. With less expensive aspirin you might be able to provide valet service.
The astronomical $500 pickup/and delivery service (herein marked as 'ECNALUBMA') shows a price-insensitivity of astronomical bounds. Do we look like the Pentagon, who buys $500 hammers? The difference is obvious when you think about it. The Pentagon is a five-sided building, and we are a four-person family in a standard four-walled house, and to our knowledge we have never started a war.
We used the ECNALUBMA because our car was in the shop, and we did not wish to pay cab fare. It is here that I would like to point out that cabs post their rates both on the inside and outside of the vehicle. The ECNALUBMA has no such posting, and such extravagant fare should be printed in letters larger and redder than the word ECNALUBMA.
Another charge is for services rendered by an attending physician. This person's job was to sign off on the work done by a twenty-nine-year-old student (who, in our opinion, probably should have graduated already). If this attending person's sole responsibilities are a) to be in attendance and b), affixing their illegible signature to paper, and they receive $473 for this work, we would like to know where to apply for the same job, since we too can readily and neatly sign our names, as will be evinced at the end of this letter.
The claim states that you have billed our family because we do not carry insurance. This is a misstatement. Our portfolio carries fire, car, flood, and rental insurance. The contact information for all these entities is attached to this letter. If you do not attempt to resolve this matter with them you are not performing due diligence.
[Honey – make sure to include a firm threat to refer this to our fictional attorney].
Finally, and with great vexation, we report that our child is not 'cured'. His acne is so acute we cannot appear with him in public.
This is our FINAL NOTICE. Any further billing attempts should be addressed to our collection agency in Namibia (see attached address).
 
copyright 2004-2024 G. Xavier Robillard
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