The week after I paid my car off, I had several associates asking me when I was buying a new one . . . apparently, “everyone” has a monthly car payment. Not me, not now– that’s the way it is here.

I agree that a lot of people aren’t saving nearly enough, and they need to change their habits. But Trent’s response of “Well, that’s one way to live, I guess” just really bothered me.

Trent happened to disagree with this person. That doesn’t give him the right to be rude and snarky. I doubt that this person will want to be friends with Trent. Whatever happened to making connections, maintaining good relations to people? That kind of comment doesn’t support that goal at all. You can disagree with someone without being offensive like that.

Now granted, Trent didn’t post the rest of this conversation, so maybe he did offer this person some advice on how to change their life. But still, the tone of the comment was really not nice.

-they are suppose to give you the in-network rate

im not sure if you mean the dr or the insurance company, but either way, this statement isnt 100% accurate. no dr bills at the in network (or ‘allowed’) amount. they bill much more. the insurance company will not cover your entire claim if you receive services at an out of network provider. you will be ‘balance billed’ by the provider for the difference in the charge and the insurance payment.

-you’re not suppose to worry about saving a few bucks if you could die

i agree. in matters of life or death, how much something is going to cost shouldnt be a priority. thats why i stressed to strick the importance of knowing and planning ahead of time, because when your little girl breaks her arm in the back yard, you cant say “hold on, let me see what neumors charges for a broken arm. im gonna check solantic too.”

if you owe a dr. $1,300 for a procedure, you have a few options.

a. pay in full. not very practical for most people.

b. set up a payment plan. you CAN work with hospitals and drs. to avoid getting credit dings because of outstanding medical debt. tell them ‘look, theres NO way i can pay this off right now, heres what i make, heres the obligations i have but i would love to work with you, lets set up a payment plan of $50 every pay period.’ this is an option most people dont know about or are scared to try. but it works.

c. offer to pay a discounted amount in full. one of my buddies (not the same one mentioned earlier) rode an out of network ambulance. $800 bill. he called and said “ive got $500 i can pay right now to settle the debt”, and it worked. best part of this plan is its a game, just see how low you can go! most hospitals have so many payments run to collections that they will gladly take a reduction in the amount due for the lump sum of cash.

but strick, unfortunately, since you went to an out of network provider, there isnt much that can be done in terms of preventing the dr/hospital from holding you responsible for the remaining amounts. it is INCREDIBLY important to stay in network when dealing with your insurance. you lose a ton of protection and benefits when you go elsewhere :(

Do you think Aetna is ripping me off?

its hard for me to say without all the details, but heres how participating/nonparticipating works(in a nutshell, dont consider this comprehensive by any means).

aetna contracts with the participating dr. bob. aetna says, “look dr. bob, ive got x-million members, x-thousand are in your area that may come to you for service. in exchange for us possibly giving you so much business, you can charge $100 for a routine visit, but we are only going to pay you $40.”(this is called an allowed amount) so strick, depending on your plan you would pay a certain amount for a co-pay (could be $10, $15, $25, $?? bucks, just depends on the company and plan), the insurance company would pay dr. bob the difference between your co-pay and the allowed amount, and dr. bob would just write of the $60 bucks as a loss.

so in this example:

you visit dr. bob for routine office visit
Dr. Bob charges $100
you pay copay of $20
Aetna allows $40 and sees you paid a $20 copay
Aetna pays dr bob $20
dr. bob writes of $60 as a loss.

the benefit you get from going to a participating provider is that he has to accept the payment the insurance company negotiated with him. so he cant come after you for the other $60.

however

if you go to dr. eli, who is NOT participating. this is what happens.

you visit dr. eli for a routine office visit.
dr. eli charges $100
you pay $20 copay
aetna allows $40 for this service and sees you paid $20
aetna pays dr. eli $20.
dr. eli then sends you a bill for $60 bucks explaining that your insurance company only paid $20 of the $100 billed.

in that case, you are stuck and owe the dr $60 bucks.

next post address what to do when you owe dr money…

Thanks for the info! As for the saving for maintenance and the next car, it’s underway!

Granted, this was said at the orientation when my company switched insurance plans and someone brought up this very topic. Don’t know if they were making it up or if it’s for real, but worth checking out.

Do you think Aetna is ripping me off? The providers seem to think their lack of coverage is typical, but by the way you describe it, seems like everything should have be in my policy somewhere. e.g. they denied the charges from a couple of assistant surgeons as unnecessary, but nothing in my manual says what number of surgeons are necessary for emergency procedures so I know to turn some away if I’m awake. And there is nothing that describes which of the lab work done on me would be determined unnecessary and which would be necessary in case I wanted to instruct the guy from the lab which test orders he should ignore from the doctor.

Either way sounds like I should get a different insurance carrier, but I’ve had similar experience with others in the past(unfortunately I’ve always been self-insured, so I kind of feel like there is no one, like my employer, that the insurance companies care to satisfy in the whole process).

Even at the political level spending is encouraged as a way to juice the economy. Notice that Cash For Clunkers specifically applied to NEW cars, and specifically excluded used ones.

In some quarters the program was hailed as a boon for consumers, but it takes more debt to buy a new car than a used one, even with the government rebate. It may be nice to buy a new car, but is the higher debt level really in most peoples best interests?

The only solution is to tune it all out, and do what you need to do. I’m not sure most people have that much confidence in themselves and their convictions.

We forget how hard it can be to initiate those changes. We have the momentum built up in our lives, to include our comfort zones, habits, likes and dislikes, and it’s hard to keep open about really looking at where you are and where you want to be. Often it takes a significant event, birth of a child, loss of a job, or other external hammer to shake us up.

Due to that momentum I’ve seen people turn down opportunities for free college because it would interfere with their “social lives”. I’ve seen people mocked mercilessly by family because they’re trying to take training or learn skills to better themselves. I’ve seen social groups who profess to support each other whip out the claws and shred someone because they’re getting ahead or drifting in a different direction than that of the pack’s momentum and the pack doesn’t like it. People tend to talk a good game, but the social animals in us tend to resent, rather than support, folks who strive to get better than we perceive ourselves to be.

-I did go to an out of network provider (that is where the ambulance took me).

ouch!! thats no fun and is what happened to a friend of mine. but the kicker is since he just called 911, (instead of one of the two ambulance companies that are ‘participating’) the ambulance was out of network too!! thankfully he had a large chunk saved through an hsa, so it wasnt too bad for him.(only broke his ankle, substantially less serious than what you went through)

- which is worthless. Even if my benefits description detailed the tens of thousand of billing codes that would be considered not covered in an emergency, I’m not sure how I could pick apart which of those services would not have been performed on me at the time.

i agree with you that us insurance companies do a horrible job educating members what is actually covered. all we do is send you that huge book at the beginning of every policy year and expect you to read it. thats not how it should be. this big push towards ‘retail health’ is very important to the company i work for, and initiatives like ‘retail health centers’ (google: “florida blue”, if you want to know more) are designed to change the way insurance is bought and thought of.

-If you are in an accident and owe $25K after the fact, I just don’t agree that it is helpful to have known your “maximum out of pocket” is $5K.

youre absolutely right and i agree

-(unless this is something planned ahead of time of course, but I don’t think thats the sort of thing that most of us worry about, since we can plan for it).

you can kind of plan for it. for instance i found out what ambulance company is participating that is closest to my house and saved their number in my phone as “ambulance”. that way if i break my leg in the backyard i will just call them instead of 911. and i know where my local urgent care center is(solantic). i can save hundreds by going there instead of the emergency room. if i had to pick which hospital i was sent to though, that i dont know, so i would be unprepared in that regard. but there are some things we can do to be better consumers.

let me know if you ever have questions about health insurance, i dont mind finding out the answers for you.

The other is giving your kids stuff they don’t really need because you don’t want them to feel deprived (or whatever word to justify this behavior). This ties in with the ‘keeping up with the Jones’ but also reflects the above thinking/feeling pattern projected on ones kids. I see this with my wife and other with kids. Their kids just have to have the latest gizmo or toy or clothing style, etc. or they just won’t fit in (some truth in that unfortunately).

With that said, there is always a place for bad luck. I purchased a house (finally) thinking it would be a good investment. A couple of years later, I discovered a roof leak that my insurance company decided was pre-existing and so would not pay. Discovering mold was not a positive outcome in all this. Well, there went my nest egg I’d been building up, with a little debt.

I will comment on how the contractor I used (this is probably epidemic), charged me quite a bit less than what he would have charged if the insurance had paid for the work. Interesting.

Overall, I think if one plans as part of their routine, you don’t run into this mentality. I’d hate to say it, but I believe most people don’t.

What also bunrs me up is the phrase “It’s only money”.

Sure, this is true and it is important to not let saving money and living frugally rule your life, but I view it in as simple of terms as possible–that is, the more money that I can save, the less I will have to stress out about how to make more money, the faster I can get to a level of income that I can live comfortably off of, and in the long run, the less hard I will have to work!

She and her husband both drive less than 3 year old cars. They don’t have kids, and they live in the house I grew up in. They help with the majority of the bills.

However, what they don’t realize is that for us, cars are not a status symbol. What we drive does not reflect who we are other than frugal people who aren’t into debt.

Good luck with that whole “holding its value” thing. Kinda tough to do with an auto.

Which incidentally is what is stopping me from buying a new car when mine is 26 years old and rusting. I don’t drive the 5 miles to work, and if I did–it’s only 5 miles. The car would sit there and leak money faster than my car leaks oil! I’d be staring at tens of thousands of dollars just…sitting…there.