- Joined
- Apr 13, 2011
- Messages
- 15,910
- Reaction score
- 12,630
- Location
- Plano, Texas
- Gender
- Female
- Political Leaning
- Other
So my PTO situation is very, very crappy. From January 1st, 2014 to December 31st, 2014 I have absolutely no PTO because of the way my employer's policy works. It's crappy...but it is what it is.
In order to avoid losing a day's worth of pay, I have been trying rather unsuccessfully to find an oral surgeon willing to extract my lower wisdom teeth (impacted, angled, and roots intruding upon the jaw bone) on the weekend.
My first (failed) attempt involved a Jefferson Dental clinic. They appear to be about 50/50 Medicaid and Medicare to private insurance. I explained the state of my lower wisdom teeth when I called to schedule an appointment. I told them I'd need to have the surgery performed on a weekend. They said that wasn't a problem. Turns out, they were full of crap, and $150 of my $2000 yearly maximum went out the door on x-rays and a consultation that did little more than waste my Saturday.
My second (failed) attempt involved a dental practice called 7 Day Dental. It wasn't until we arrived at the clinic this past Sunday that I realized it was largely a Medicaid/Medicare clinic. Roughly 90% of their patients are covered by Medicaid or Medicare. They called me the day before my appointment to tell me I needed to arrive at least 30 minutes prior to my scheduled appointment in order to avoid "losing" my place in line. I should have taken that as a sign and cancelled right then and there, but I'm so desperate to get these damned teeth out that I went ahead and kept the appointment.
I showed up 45 minutes before my appointment and was told there were two people ahead of me and that it would be about an hour. Not too bad, considering that would only be 15 minutes after my actual appointment. The lobby was full (bad sign #2), so I said I'd wait in my car and they agreed to come call me when they were ready.
An hour later, I hadn't been called. So I go inside and wait to speak with the girl at the front desk. As I'm waiting to speak with her and ask where I'm at in the wait, another lady storms out of the back, complaining about the fact that they didn't have laughing gas. This causes another lady to literally push past me and cut me off in getting to the lady at the front desk.
She demands to know what the other patient is talking about regarding laughing gas. The lady behind the counter responds by saying, "Yeah......uhm....the owner, right? He hasn't ordered any gas in like, a long time." The lady then asks if there is any option for alternative sedation. The girl at the counter says, "Uhm....yeah....you'll just like, a local agent, right? Yeah...."
So not only do they NOT have any sedation service (laughing gas is advertised on their website), but they assume there's no need to mention that before people show up for MAJOR oral surgery.
So I FINALLY get my chance to speak with this half-brain dead idiot behind the counter, and I ask her how long the wait is from this point. She looks at a stack of paper on the counter, stares at me blankly for about 30 seconds, looks back to the papers, then says, "there are three people still ahead of you, so it'll be like, an hour, right?" I then asked her if this was just a random guess, if she was just randomly guessing the first time, or if she had any ACTUAL idea what the wait would be.
She then proceeds to tell me that because the oral surgeon only works one day a month, that he has them triple book. But the clinic still closes at 2pm, so anybody who hasn't been called back by then won't get seen, and will be bumped to the next month, AFTER any appointments already scheduled for that next visit.
So I left. With my wisdom teeth.
The lady who cut in front of me also left. Apparently she'd been waiting two years for Medicaid to approve oral surgery for her 7 year old daughter. She didn't want her daughter to have major oral surgery performed without sedation, so she rescheduled for the following month with the non-committal statement from the front desk wench that "maybe the owner will like, order some gas before then, right?"
The Sunday trip was the most frustrating, because I drove 53 miles one way, wasted almost two hours of my time, then drove 53 miles back home for absolutely no good reason at all. All because this clinic is poorly run, poorly managed, staffed by idiots, and owned by somebody who obviously has absolutely no concern about quality of care.
Having been a Medicaid kid when I lived with my mom after my parents' divorce, this experience was like a flashback. I remember waiting almost 2 months to have a sonogram done when I was 12 because I getting debilitating pain in my abdomen at least 2x weekly. I remember being told that we'd have to pay for the sonogram out of pocket and get a clinic credit if medicaid covered it, because they still hadn't received an approval for the procedure.
Do people on government-funded insurance plans think this is quality care? My non-medicaid PCP and OBGYN respond faster, address concerns more accurately, and provide a very adequate level of care and consideration for my needs. When I had a health scare a few months ago I was able to get an appointment for the testing needed to validate or disprove my doctor's concerns within 24 hours (though I had to opt for a later appointment due to my work schedule).
If my past and recent experiences are indicative of government-subsidized care, then I sure as hell don't want it.
In order to avoid losing a day's worth of pay, I have been trying rather unsuccessfully to find an oral surgeon willing to extract my lower wisdom teeth (impacted, angled, and roots intruding upon the jaw bone) on the weekend.
My first (failed) attempt involved a Jefferson Dental clinic. They appear to be about 50/50 Medicaid and Medicare to private insurance. I explained the state of my lower wisdom teeth when I called to schedule an appointment. I told them I'd need to have the surgery performed on a weekend. They said that wasn't a problem. Turns out, they were full of crap, and $150 of my $2000 yearly maximum went out the door on x-rays and a consultation that did little more than waste my Saturday.
My second (failed) attempt involved a dental practice called 7 Day Dental. It wasn't until we arrived at the clinic this past Sunday that I realized it was largely a Medicaid/Medicare clinic. Roughly 90% of their patients are covered by Medicaid or Medicare. They called me the day before my appointment to tell me I needed to arrive at least 30 minutes prior to my scheduled appointment in order to avoid "losing" my place in line. I should have taken that as a sign and cancelled right then and there, but I'm so desperate to get these damned teeth out that I went ahead and kept the appointment.
I showed up 45 minutes before my appointment and was told there were two people ahead of me and that it would be about an hour. Not too bad, considering that would only be 15 minutes after my actual appointment. The lobby was full (bad sign #2), so I said I'd wait in my car and they agreed to come call me when they were ready.
An hour later, I hadn't been called. So I go inside and wait to speak with the girl at the front desk. As I'm waiting to speak with her and ask where I'm at in the wait, another lady storms out of the back, complaining about the fact that they didn't have laughing gas. This causes another lady to literally push past me and cut me off in getting to the lady at the front desk.
She demands to know what the other patient is talking about regarding laughing gas. The lady behind the counter responds by saying, "Yeah......uhm....the owner, right? He hasn't ordered any gas in like, a long time." The lady then asks if there is any option for alternative sedation. The girl at the counter says, "Uhm....yeah....you'll just like, a local agent, right? Yeah...."
So not only do they NOT have any sedation service (laughing gas is advertised on their website), but they assume there's no need to mention that before people show up for MAJOR oral surgery.
So I FINALLY get my chance to speak with this half-brain dead idiot behind the counter, and I ask her how long the wait is from this point. She looks at a stack of paper on the counter, stares at me blankly for about 30 seconds, looks back to the papers, then says, "there are three people still ahead of you, so it'll be like, an hour, right?" I then asked her if this was just a random guess, if she was just randomly guessing the first time, or if she had any ACTUAL idea what the wait would be.
She then proceeds to tell me that because the oral surgeon only works one day a month, that he has them triple book. But the clinic still closes at 2pm, so anybody who hasn't been called back by then won't get seen, and will be bumped to the next month, AFTER any appointments already scheduled for that next visit.
So I left. With my wisdom teeth.
The lady who cut in front of me also left. Apparently she'd been waiting two years for Medicaid to approve oral surgery for her 7 year old daughter. She didn't want her daughter to have major oral surgery performed without sedation, so she rescheduled for the following month with the non-committal statement from the front desk wench that "maybe the owner will like, order some gas before then, right?"
The Sunday trip was the most frustrating, because I drove 53 miles one way, wasted almost two hours of my time, then drove 53 miles back home for absolutely no good reason at all. All because this clinic is poorly run, poorly managed, staffed by idiots, and owned by somebody who obviously has absolutely no concern about quality of care.
Having been a Medicaid kid when I lived with my mom after my parents' divorce, this experience was like a flashback. I remember waiting almost 2 months to have a sonogram done when I was 12 because I getting debilitating pain in my abdomen at least 2x weekly. I remember being told that we'd have to pay for the sonogram out of pocket and get a clinic credit if medicaid covered it, because they still hadn't received an approval for the procedure.
Do people on government-funded insurance plans think this is quality care? My non-medicaid PCP and OBGYN respond faster, address concerns more accurately, and provide a very adequate level of care and consideration for my needs. When I had a health scare a few months ago I was able to get an appointment for the testing needed to validate or disprove my doctor's concerns within 24 hours (though I had to opt for a later appointment due to my work schedule).
If my past and recent experiences are indicative of government-subsidized care, then I sure as hell don't want it.
