Snippets (money)

Things to use or delete. See Snippets.

Courtesan Note

The 1891 U.S. $1,000 silver certificate, known as the Courtesan Note, depicts the image of a woman that was based on a photograph of Josie Mansfield.

• Josie Mansfield @ Wikipedia

Health insurance predation

I’ve never dealt with the charlatans; but I have, somewhat recently, dealt with an entity that very specifically promised that out-of-pocket costs would be no more than $X, in most cases insurance covers it and if not we absolutely won’t proceed with the service until you have been informed of, and consented to, the actual cost in your case.

Naturally, I heard nothing until one day I received a bill for almost exactly $20*X along with a document containing some rejection codes that a billing and coding professional I consulted hadn’t previously seen; and an explanation of how I was liable for all charges. And also not the diagnostic results the service was supposed to provide. In the…spirit of generosity…they mentioned both the possiblity of a payment plan and the possibility of sending the account to collections and having me hounded by a dizzying array of ever sleazier collectors; rather than just the latter.

After ~8 months of ongoing negotiation, with some specialist assistance brought in, they mysteriously decided that their earlier reckoning hadn’t been a mistake; but I actually owed them $.87*X.

It sure is a good thing that contract law lives in Libertarian Plato’s realm of The Forms, free from any distortions imposed by wildly disparate power among contracting parties; or I might have been worried there for a bit.

- Boing Boing post by fuzzyfungus (May 21, 2019)