Update on my "bent" friend...

[chuck86]

I did not doubt that DAN would pay. Its just that I dont think that setteling within a few days is the norm. My claim took four months (with primary insurance).
Even a claim on a flooded camera took about 3-4 weeks.

My settlement with DAN was total and complete within 7 days after arriving home.

 

[DiverG]

Christi you are right on all counts.

The only thing about the Dr. filing the claim in my case was that when he filed it was for his part. The hospital was seperate, which I paid with a Visa Card.

When DAN returned the letter to Dr. Piccolo they did as most insurance companies do. They discounted the bill some and then stated on the bill that Dr. Piccolo should accept this as payment in full.

I then told the Dr. not to accept that payment.

1. because he was not being paid in full for his bill and
2. If that was accepted as payment in full it left me with no way to recoup my
hospital costs.

That is when I told the Dr. to accept nothing, I would call my banker and send him the full amount. Then I would go to DAN with the complete list from the Dr and the hospital. When this was done DAN came through completely. Dan Ohr did call me and apologize for the inconvience and said that he would personally see that everything was taken care of.

It was; they sent me a check for the full amount even down to the costs for the wire transfer fees from my bank to Dr piccolo's bank.

I now have DAN preferred and I will say this: no one and I do mean NO ONE should ever get into the water without some sort of insurance.

Whatever type you have, but please do not dive without insurane.

When I got bent there was not one thing wrong with my dive. My computer shows no violations. It was 73 feet with a total time of 46 minutes.

That being said anyone can get bent at anytime. My total bill was just over $16,000 and without DAN it would have devastated my family for years to come.

That insurance is cheap at twice the price.

okay off the soap box now.

Chuck, I'm like you. I do not have primary insurance, but I have DAN preferred. I do not have $5000 much less $10000 or more sitting in the bank,or on a credit card to cover a chamber ride or hospital stay. Will Dan make all arrangements to ensure I get the treatment I need including any hospital stays?

Christi or anyone else do you know the answer to this question?

 

[SpeedoLouie]

.

 

[chuck86]

Chuck, I'm like you. I do not have primary insurance, but I have DAN preferred. I do not have $5000 much less $10000 or more sitting in the bank,or on a credit card to cover a chamber ride or hospital stay. Will Dan make all arrangements to ensure I get the treatment I need including any hospital stays?

Christi or anyone else do you know the answer to this question?

First of all let me explain for the person above that I did not at the time have primary health insurance. I had been layed off at my job and single health insurnace not being in a grouop of some kind was about $1600 per month and it was out of the question. I already had the dive gear and from there this person can rant and rave all they want but some people do not have the advantage that other people have.

Now for your question, there was never a time that Dr Piccolo was worried about me not having Primary Insurance. He said not to worry that DAN would cover it, and he would file for me.

After all of this is when we started having the small problems that I eluded to above.

Of course I can not speak for eveyone this is just the way it went down for me.

Also since that time I have found some insurance and I now have primary insurance so louie does not have to carry me any more.

 

[cdiver2]

Hey Man:

Am I reading your post correctly? You don't have primary health care insurance but you have money to buy dive gear and go on dive vacations. Is that the gist of it?

So, you are a 35 year old man living in Houston without health care insurance. If you get sick or have an accident your EMS ride to the hospital and your emergency room care will get picked up free of charge by American tax payers. In order words, people like me take it in the shorts to pay for your irresponsible behavior.

But you are not stupid are you? You buy dive insurance before you go diving in Mexico because you know you won't get treated down there for free. They might let you die! So you make sure you have insurance for that, don't you.

Chuck86 can speak for himself but I did not read anywhere in his posts where he said he did not have primary health care insurance.

Wake up, there are thousands upon thousands of people in the US that are not fortunate enough to have health insurance, if you do have it consider yourself one of the lucky ones.
Christi states "I do not believe he (Chuck86) has primary insurance" I would also come to the same conclusion if the bill was paid in seven days, as DAN requires you to submit to your primary FIRST, then they pay what the primary did not cover.

PS I consider your post to be an objectional personel attack on another board member

 

[DiverG]

Hey Man:

Am I reading your post correctly? You don't have primary health care insurance but you have money to buy dive gear and go on dive vacations. Is that the gist of it?

So, you are a 35 year old man living in Houston without health care insurance. If you get sick or have an accident your EMS ride to the hospital and your emergency room care will get picked up free of charge by American tax payers. In order words, people like me take it in the shorts to pay for your irresponsible behavior.

But you are not stupid are you? You buy dive insurance before you go diving in Mexico because you know you won't get treated down there for free. They might let you die! So you make sure you have insurance for that, don't you.

Chuck86 can speak for himself but I did not read anywhere in his posts where he said he did not have primary health care insurance.

Go read post #48, christi said she thought Chuck didn't have primary insurance. She may have been wrong and if so then I was wrong.

Next, are you to judge me? Not everyone in this country is insurable. Some people don't have the kind of jobs that the company has insurance available for there employees, and sometimes insurance is priced out of the market. So unless you know me and my sitituation you have no right to judge me.

 

[DiverG]

Wake up, there are thousands upon thousands of people in the US that are not fortunate enough to have health insurance, if you do have it consider yourself one of the lucky ones.
Christi states "I do not believe he (Chuck86) has primary insurance" I would also come to the same conclusion if the bill was paid in seven days, as DAN requires you to submit to your primary FIRST, then they pay what the primary did not cover.

PS I consider your post to be an objectional personel attack on another board member

Don't worry I just responded in kind, and if I figure out how to report myself to the mods I will do so. Looks like board software automatically fixed my choice of words.

 

[D_B]

So glad it all worked out , How are you doing now Chuck?


I have the DAN Master Ins, will be upgraded to Preferred if taking a dive vacation.

Christy once again shows what kind of person she is, what kind of dive buddy she is ... I will dive with her outfit if/when I ever get to Cozumel , just because of this and other things posted here at ScubaBoard about her

Thank You Christy

DB

 

[DA Aquamaster]

So, you are a 35 year old man living in Houston without health care insurance. If you get sick or have an accident your EMS ride to the hospital and your emergency room care will get picked up free of charge by American tax payers. In order words, people like me take it in the shorts to pay for your irresponsible behavior.

The reality is that 40% of Americans do not have and cannot afford health insurance. Now you can blame them for the fact that we also have a society that will treat persons with no resources or insurance for acute medical conditions, but that is not their fault.

It is also not their fault that our parasitic, profit oriented and bloated to excess cash and carry medical system will not treat people proactively. For example if a 40 year old person with high cholesteral could not afford treatment our medical community will do absolutley nothing to help he or she proactively unless they can pay for it. Instead we will wait until the person has a heart attack and then we will do a bypass surgery and pass that $100,000 plus cost for the procedure done on the uninsured patient onto insurance companies and other paying medical consumers. The medical system as a whole would save a lot more money providing free proactive treatment than it does allowing hospitals to cultivate a lucrative reactive treatment industry where it passes those much higher costs onto others and then virtually nominates itself for sainthood in the process.

It's not the uninsured paitent's fault that health costs are high - it's a systemic problem. In the US we have a health care system where being a doctor or medical adminsitrator are high status professions that command big bucks and we have a system dedicated to charging big bucks to meet that requirement. Unfortunately we also have a very competetive industry that seems to breed hospitals that compete with each other by purchasing under utilized, very specialized and very expensive equipment in order to keep up with the the competition that could otherwise be shared between facilities. A result of this is that most hostpitals require their attending physicians to refer X amount of money per month in diagnostic services to keep those hospital privledges. This results in a high percentage of needless tests and procedures, that while arguably useful, in fact provide no information that would otherwise change the course of treatment. The next time a Dr. orders further testing, ask he or she if the results will make any difference in how you are ultimately be treated for the condition - the (honest) answer will quite often be "none".

Part of the problem also is the high profit margins expected by insurance companies who on average make a lot more than the average Fortune 500 company.

Personally, with the escalating costs of medical services, medical lobby induced laws like our nearly useless drug lobby authored medicare prescription drug legislation, and high insurance company profit margins, I think within 5 years medical insurance will cease to be a viable option for the vast majority of Americans. Insurance rates continue to climb and are reaching levels where neither working citizens nor their employers can afford to provide coverage. I know my employer pays just under $5000 per year per employee (all 12,000 of them) for employee health coverage and they are considering increasing employee costs or reducing employee coverage to keep the system viable. It's pretty clear that in the next year or so either my take home pay or insurance coverage is going to decrease significantly.

So..if you want to debate the real problem - feel free. But please refrain from disparaging comments about any individuals or class of people.

 

[Guy Carrier]

Christi,

I just upgraded our DAN insurance from standard to preferred. Hope we don't need it but its nice to know someone in Cozumel who'll help us if we do. Also, we'll be drinking H2O on the airplane in the hopes you can get us a PM dive on arrival day. See you in 9 days.

Guy