You want me to pay WHAT for my daughter to go potty?

There are over $3,000 worth of medical bills sitting on my desk that arrived over the last two weeks. Most of them came as a total surprise. This is not a good surprise.

It's upsetting, but I'm used to it by now. After five years of major medical concerns with my immediate family, I've resigned myself to the fact that even with insurance our medical expenses have been and may continue to be over $10,000/year on average. (I really hope it's less this year though!)

Yes, that is a huge number and impossible to budget for, but I try not to let it get me down because I know some families have it much, much worse.

But these recent bills did rile me up a bit. The biggest one was from our catheter supplier that I haven't used since last February and thought I was completely paid up on in October. They sent me a bill for about $500 last month, which I argued. But then this is the lovely bill just arrived in the mail...

That's right, Surprise we think you still owe us $1,322.74! Um...No I don't. Fortunately, it only took me a couple calls to them to resolve this and explain everything. And Praise the Lord, they agreed we don't owe this.

Now, they had better not try again next month!

But really, this catheter issue is a doozy. You may have read my post from September when I was so excited because I thought we had found a great solution to our costly catheter issue (Adria requires 5 disposable catheters a day to empty her bladder).

Unfortunately, I was terribly wrong. It appears they may cost us more than ever. We had started using a new company in July who initially told me it would only be $40/month after our deductible. I just got the first bill from them and they want...$396 a month after insurance! This is just craziness.

You mean to tell me that I have to pay almost $400 a month so that my daughter has the privilege to pee?

Add to that the $78 a month we pay for Enemeez, which are not covered by our insurance at all, but help empty her bowel and the $50+ a month we still spend in diapers for her, and the grand total is over $500 so that my little girl can go potty.

Am I the only one who thinks this sounds absolutely ridiculous???

But before you get riled up like me, please understand that I do not and will not accept this. I have already spent hours on the phone this week with both my insurance and the catheter supplier. We WILL work out a more reasonable payment. This momma does not back down and give in that easily. I've been through this before, and you won't get a penny out of me that I don't think is rightfully due. But once we do work it out, you will get your money.

All of that is with my insurance that I've had, but things are about to change. For better or worse, it's hard to say, but I am directly impacted by the Affordable Care Act a.k.a. Obamacare. Now that I am with a much smaller company that does not offer health insurance the same way as larger corporations, I signed up for one of the new metal plans in the private marketplace (Highmark BlueCross BlueShield.)

These are supposedly the same exact health plans offered by the federal government through Obamacare. Really, the only reason someone should even try to sign up under the Affordable Care Act vs. private insurance is to see if they qualify for the tax credit. From what I've read about my new benefits, we shouldn't have to pay as much for the catheters...but I've thought that before. Time will tell.

These annoying medical bills were made slightly more bearable with the fact that 2014 is off to a good start at work - I sold two new homes this week that together total over $500,000 :)

All-in-all I find myself hoping and praying that this will be the year without an ER visit. This will be the year when our medical costs are less than they have been. And this year I won't be spending days of my life arguing medical expenses. 

Adria during one of her regular visits to the Children's Hospital