The NCAA Football Championship Is On Cable (Not in My Package)
I've occasionally tweeted and blogged on this topic before; I think both the NCAA men's basketball finale and football championship games as well as the Wimbledon final are now exclusively broadcast on a cable channel (e.g., ESPN) not in my cable lineup. So here we go again: Monday night's championship game between LSU and Clemson will not be telecast on one of the 4 major national broadcast networks--which means I won't be able to watch it. (I suppose I could approach my cable provider and subscribe to some add-on bundle, but I seriously doubt I would get my money's worth. In the years I've had ESPN, I rarely watched it, maybe tuning in during football season if they were broadcasting games from my alma maters of Texas or Houston.)I really don't watch that much of cable. In fact, for a stretch of a few years around the turn of the century, I wasn't subscribing to cable at all. For one thing, I was doing a lot of business travel. I also was an early (but not current) Netflix subscriber which was an alternative to premium cable movie channels.
I've been wondering for some time why we haven't seen more of a micro payments approach to media in general, including, say, newspapers. We could have a variation of an EZPass (an interstate road toll system, where you prepay/replenish via your credit card). So instead of paying a flat $10 or whatever monthly charge the NYT goes for, I might be able to buy features a la carte, e.g., for national news, the crossword puzzles, book sections, comics, commentary, whatever, even for single-use accesses for maybe a nickel or a quarter. For example, I have no interest or use for NYT local/state coverage, classified or other ads. To give another example, maybe a regular season game becomes significant because of playoff significance, some performer is approaching some record milestone (or imagine being able to tune into a no-hitter or perfect game in progress!) For another example, maybe I might be willing to pay a premium for no-ad events.
I've had a related feud with the Wall Street Journal. I was an early digital subscriber at about $49/year, then winced when the price jumped up to $79/89, and finally dropped it when it surged past $100. I'm particularly annoyed when they included op-eds in their paywalls. I've never gotten a penny in 11.5 years of producing this blog; I'm not about to pay to promote someone else's opinions. I even complained to Don Boudreaux for promoting an opinion he wrote behind a paywall. Maybe I wouldn't mind so much if they charged me a dime or a quarter, but paying a $100+ subscription fee just to get access to a political opinion when opinions are typically free distributed via the Internet? They should use them as an advertisement, not as a profit center.
I usually spent Monday night watching pro wrestling anyway, among other things. So I'll probably Google and browser-refresh for the score. But I will not subscribe to ESPN just to watch a single event.
Medical Bills
I suspect other people have far more serious medical/financial issues and might dismiss my concerns as relatively trivial. But I've gotten whipsawed between my health insurer and the hospital, and this is totally stupid and annoying as hell.In early/mid November I suddenly developed a minor health condition. My doctor thought it was more serious; I initially thought I had developed carpal tunnel syndrome perhaps due to a smaller computer keyboard I had been using. Long story short, he sent me to the hospital, where I stayed for 3 days. They concluded it was more serious, and I ended up staying 3 days, mostly as a preventive measure in case I suffered a follow-up incident. No therapy for the hand/wrist issue; mostly I went through an exhaustive number of expensive tests with no positive results (i.e., they couldn't determine a cause for the incident. I quickly regained normal functionality of my left hand/wrist on its own. The only difference was they didn't like my cholesterol test results and prescribed a statin, which I'm not crazy about but at least one younger sibling has been on a statin for years.
Now the main point is this: on the morning of my discharge, I got a phone call to my room where some bureaucrat claimed my health insurance had expired. This probably explains what I'll describe below. This was not true, but there was some bureaucratic delay screw-up in posting my payment for November and apparently the hospital was receiving some obsolete status which was resolved internally before my stay and probably the hospital would get an updated status the next day in their system. I discussed this matter multiple times with hospital personnel.
So post-stay, I've gotten at least 2 invoices from the hospital and (separately) doctor services which came directly to me and not adjudicated by my insurance company. Some of the doctor charges and medical tests were sent to the insurance company, and I've paid two of those related, "my responsibility" invoices. I contacted my insurance company about the non-adjudicated claims, and the health insurance people basically say, "Hey, not our problem; we've processed what they've sent to us." I contacted them about a $6600 invoice (the first hospital invoice) on Christmas Eve, and I pressed the insurance analyst to call the hospital and hear her give a mailing address to the hospital bureaucrat. So when I called about the second, separate doctor's invoice yesterday, I checked on the status of the first invoice with the new insurer analyst, and she said (two weeks later!) the invoice wasn't in the system yet! Oh, come on! I'm sure the hospital hasn't forgotten about the invoice, and I don't want them to screw with my credit because the bureaucrats aren't adjudicating the claim! It's not my responsibility to supervise the process! I'm halfway expecting the hospital to come back at me for failing to pay my bills. I've done more than my fair share with both parties trying to expedite adjudication. My insurance premiums are already very high. The current process is already very fragmentary. I've gotten at least 4 invoices to date, and most of the incurred charges haven't been adjudicated. So I have to double-check against duplicate charges and whether line items have been adjudicated. It would be much easier if I got a consolidated "my responsibility" invoice.
The only thing worse than this is if it were the government screwing this up. The government uses force to enforce its screw-ups.
