Heart Surgery and Health insurance

When we went to Stanford we were careful to ensure that Wren's surgery would be covered "in network". I remember a number of calls between us, insurers and LPCH's billing people. In retrospect I think we were lucky. I didn't understand that in-network charges may be expressed two ways with vastly different consequences for the final bill you receive. I credit MSNBC / Microsoft's great health insurance for getting us out of a potentially huge bill. This link is about Jodi's Lemack's story - she's a heart mum whom I emailed when we learned of Wren's diagnosis. Her son, Joshua, has HLHS and she runs an advocacy group called Little Hearts.

Here's the story. Hopefully it will help us all anticipate these problems (although how you can interrupt an anesthesiologist before surgery and ask about their insurance networks, I dunno).