We've paid 1884 towards deductables (1500 John, 384 me). Plus another 1500 in copays which got John up to his annual out of pocket maximum. Yeah, the maximum we didn't realize did NOT apply to out of network services.

So... we've paid 3384 so far.

And now I'm guessing we'll have to pay the 7000 for the testing. I'm gonna fight it but we don't really have a leg to stand on. The lab is out of network. All bets are off when it's out of network. Insurance doesn't have a contract with them to reduce costs & you have to pay whatever they charge.

But you know, even if we'd know that up front, we'd have agreed to the testing anyway. Anything to help him keep the big C from getting worse.

For trivia's sake, I looked it up.... So far, just this year alone, we've been billed $254736. Insurance has written off/discounted $106076 of that so they've paid roughly $148,660 thus far.

And that doesn't include this latest trip to Houston (which included extensive bloodwork, 2 different CT scans, the appointment with the oncologist, and a new prescription). I don't think it covers his last appointment at UK either.

At one point, his treatments were being billed at $75,000 each... We were paying NOTHING.

So I guess I can't complain too much.

Just for grins, I ran last year's numbers which included my hysterectomy, his nephrectomy, and my tongue biopsy.. Amount billed: 179131, Amount discounted: 111594, Deductable: 2953, Copays: 3176... so roughly insurance ended up paying 49386 while we paid 5701.

Yes, I know the numbers don't all add up to match. There were some things I simply couldn't match up between the bills we received and the "explanation of benefits" we got from the insurance. After beating my head against my desk and getting repeated headaches, I gave up & called it "good enough"!