RE: Cost of medical equpment

Nora Blalock (NBlalock(AT)elpc.org)
Fri, 20 Mar 1998 13:47:40 -0600

This insurance issue is one of great concern to me - mainly because the
insurance company provided from my job, spent months trying to avoid
paying the bills on the grounds of "pre-existing" conditions. How the
heck "paralysis" can be pre-existing, I'll never know. Anyway, this
issue is one entire chapter in "my story" for the anthology or book
alone if the anthology does not go. At one point, while recuperating,
the insurance company sent all the bills to me, marked "unpaid", and I
thought I was going to end up a bag-lady or have a court battle on my
hands that I knew I could not afford. Luckily, the agent who handles
this company's claims with the insurance company was a Florence in
Nightingale. She fought for my claim all the way until it went through.
Very serious stuff here folks. Things like this MUST BE MADE PUBLIC
KNOWLEDGE in any way possible.
Nora

> -----Original Message-----
> From: James Lubin [SMTP:jlubin(AT)eskimo.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 1998 3:27 PM
> To: Nora Blalock; 'Johnnie DeGrand'; JHarper33; tmic-list(AT)eskimo.com
> Subject: RE: Cost of medical equpment
>
> At 01:48 PM 3/17/98 -0600, Nora Blalock wrote: It's
> >bad enough being in a wheelchair without getting injured more because
> >capitalism is the ideology in this society that makes it impossible
> for
> >most people to get the equipment they really need. The wheelchair I
> >have cost $5,000 and that is absolutely ridiculous.
>
> My wheelchair cost $24,000. The 2 ventilators that my insurance
> company
> bought 9 years ago cost $8000 each. Both no longer work. I no longer
> have
> private insurance, only medicare/medicaid. Medicare will only pay for
> 1
> ventilator (as of Nov 1997). We are currently (for the past 3 months)
> trying to get them to pay for the second ventilator which I've been
> using
> since my other one stopped working.
>
>
> ----
> Jim Lubin
> jlubin(AT)eskimo.com
> Bothell, WA, USA <http://www.eskimo.com/~jlubin>
> disAbility Resources: <http://www.eskimo.com/~jlubin/disabled>