CrankyBuddhist   the learning never ends …

I’m not exactly sure what the first $21,odd thousand dollars was for. Apparently not much as I am now getting more bills from the anatheseologist, the pathologist, the ultrasound technician and the emergency room.

Actually the original bill was $54, some odd thousand dollars, but they gave me a $32,000 uninsured person discount.

And just as I predicted, the Financial Counselor told me not to worry about running around and getting my paperwork together because there wasn’t a deadline, yet today I received a letter from the hospital saying that I did not meet my 30 day deadline for turning in my paperwork. Although, they are going to be nice and give me another 30-day extension.

I’ve decided to just take as much time as I need tomorrow and do all the running around and get this crap taken care of.

Maybe I should just declare myself homeless?

How do people with more serious problems deal with this …

This whole surgery thing is throwing me for a loop. But then I have to put it in perspective and know that, all things considered, and on the pain scale of 0 – 10, my life pain over this should be 0, or maybe a 1.

On a weird note, if I declared myself homeless I could have the hospital bill written off just like that *snap*.

On a good note, if I just fill out all of the paperwork as a normal person, I should qualify for a write off.

National Healthcare! Socialized Medicine! No one should have to worry about these things, let alone people who are actually sick!

And the grand total for emergency gall bladder surgery is …

$21,865.66

Oh, that is after the Uninsured Patient Discount, and don’t forget, that’s payable immediately.

And to think that one minute prior to surgery I had been debt free for about two years … Oh well, what’s a life for, anyway?

For some reason this is not bothering me …

There is nothing surprising about the current housing crisis. For those of you that have been living under a rock for the last few years, I’m talking about all of the subprime loans that were doled out a few years ago to people who couldn’t afford to own homes in the first place. These loans were attractive because, and it depends on the type of subprime loan you applied for, one didn’t have to have a good credit rating to get one. In some cases a person didn’t even have to prove they were employed to get a loan.

I’ve been living out of my car, and sometimes in my car, for the last seven years. About four years ago, my bank asked me everytime I walked into it if I would like a loan to by a house. It was tempting. I’ve always dreamt of owning my own home. They would have just handed over the cash, almost no questions asked – and this is a major bank, not a fly by night credit or mortgage company.

I said no for one reason. No, for two reasons. I could see how this was going to play out and it didn’t make sense to lock myself into the then housing market which seemed just a tad inflated at the time. I understood the risk, and even though it was so tempting to get out of the car and out of storage, I held back. Instead, I plodded along, putting what I could into savings for a down payment on a *real* loan someday. I knew that if I took out a subprime loan, it would come back and bite me (and everyone else) in the ass one day. That if I wasn’t on my toes, constantly one step ahead of the game, I would end up a loser.

Loser living in a VW bus? Or, loser with a defaulted loan on a foreclosed house?

Which looks better? Or worse?

Anyway.

My crankiness right now is that folks may get bailed out of their stupidity. Heck, if I had forseen that, that I could have fallen back on the government bailing me out, I maybe would have taken out one of those loans and ran with it, gleefully. But counting on a government bailout was an even bigger risk.

I have a friend who says I shouldn’t let it bother me (and I actually agree with her, but I want to sit in my crankiness for a moment, please indulge me), that people didn’t read the paperwork, or understand what they getting into. That I should be happy that I had a clue card and they might get bailed out, that it will be good for everyone.

Who has an opinion on this?

(P.S.: I don’t think of myself as a loser.)