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Wait, what?

January 9th, 2014 at 11:29 pm

I came to work today after 5 days (the weekend, plus a work-from-home day Monday, then surgery and recovery Tues.-Wed.) and my head is spinning.

I'd brought my work laptop home for working Monday, but of course didn't touch it the other days so completely forgot about it this morning. After some digging around, tech guy was able to find me a loaner, but it's a buggy little laptop with terrible scrolling ability.

Then, at some point I took a bathroom break, and as I pulled down my slacks I realized they were more snug than they had been this morning. My legs looked swollen, one of them noticeably more than the other! I contacted the pharmacy and my dentist to see if it could be one of the drugs I'm on, and they said it could be the antibiotic, though that would be an unusual reaction. So dentist wants me to monitor it and let him know tomorrow if it's gotten worse. I'm always slightly freaked out by unknown symptoms, so it's been a bit hard to concentrate. But I haven't felt too bad otherwise, and the swelling hasn't gotten worse yet, so that's something.

Then, I see a voicemail on my work phone from Monday. It's from the dentist's office, reminding me about the Tuesday appointment, and telling me that my portion of the bill would be ... $1615!

Wait, what? I read the insurance policy pretty thoroughly and my best estimate was $3400. That means I was off by $1785, and that my total bill (after my regular dentist does her thing) will be about $3261.

Which is such great news -- except, thinking my bill would be $5046, NT and I each set aside $2500 in our flex spending accounts. So now we've got $1739 more in flex than we need for this procedure!

I'm trying to look on the bright side: A) I'll only have to use THREE credit cards, not six, to pay this bill. Wink B) This year, for the first time, you're allowed to keep a certain amount of flex spending for the next year. I'm not totally clear on the law, but I'm thinking NT and I will each be able to roll over $500, making it $1000? If so, we're only $739 over. That wouldn't be so bad; there's always a chance regular medical expenses and copays will eat that up over the course of a year and, if not, there's a $600 (or so) non-essential test that I've been opting out of that my doctor would like me to get. If we're getting to the end of the year and we haven't used much of this money, I may go ahead and get that test just so the money doesn't go to waste.

What a weird day. My head is spinning!

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

5 Responses to “Wait, what?”

  1. scfr Says:
    January 10th, 2014 at 12:15 am 1389312911
    1389312911

    The government now allows companies to allow up to $500 rollover ... but it's still up to the company (or perhaps it's more accurate to say a company's FSA provider) to decide if they will allow it. When I wrote to my company's benefits department asking about this when trying to decide whether or not I wanted to enroll in the FSA for 2014, they said that their FSA administrator could not guarantee having the mechanism in place to enable rollovers by the end of 2014. (My thought was that maybe they needed a new FSA administrator, but I kept my mouth shut & declined to enroll.) http://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/jl2202.aspx

  2. creditcardfree Says:
    January 10th, 2014 at 12:27 am 1389313660
    1389313660

    I'd say that is mostly good news. I'm sure you can find ways to use that flex money if needed. And with kids, it is possible something will eat into that a little...not that I wish sickness on anyone!

  3. Jenn Says:
    January 10th, 2014 at 01:20 am 1389316800
    1389316800

    If anyone wears glasses, you can buy an extra pair (or contacts) at the end of the year. That's what we did in 2013 since we were especially healthy.

  4. snafu Says:
    January 10th, 2014 at 03:05 am 1389323132
    1389323132

    Hope problem with swelling has been resolved. Can you check with pharmacist as to possible side effects from drugs given during this last procedure? You can look up some drugs on PDR [Physicians Desk Reference] on-line.

    Is there any way to verify the figures for the entire implant procedure ? The original estimate of each segment, the sums paid by insurance for each segment and how it was applied to each dentist and facility charges? Can they come back asking fora balance as a result of some error?

  5. CB in the City Says:
    January 10th, 2014 at 03:06 pm 1389366407
    1389366407

    I hate the flex spend guessing game! But it is good that the procedure was so much cheaper than you thought!

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