The Simple Wealth

The prices of food have been rising. It is very important to be a conscious shopper in order to cut down food and grocery expenses. My husband told me last night about a news he heard that the parents of a family try to eat less so that their kids could have more to eat due to the rising food prices. As I said before, knowing the price plays a key role in controlling your food budget.

I have done my weekly shopping on Tuesday in Foods Co this week. I spent $54.42 and the groceries I bought included a family pack of chicken legs and a pack of pork chops. I always keep my freezer well stocked with meat, fish and shrimps. I didn’t really need to do more shopping this week, but I was browsing the weekly flyers yesterday and saw that Foods Co has mangos 2 for 98¢ and pork spareribs $1.27 per pound on sale while Safeway has mangos 4 for $1, pork spareribs $1.69 per pound. I like to stockpile some ribs for BBQ, and Safeway has pork shoulder country style ribs on sale for 99¢ per pound today, Thursday, one day only. I decided to go to Safeway to stock up on mangos and country style ribs instead of spareribs. Since I had to drop Katrina to her preschool anyway, and Safeway is nearby.

So I was there in Safeway, but could not find pork country style ribs. Then I heard two lady asking the butcher about ribs, the butcher promised to bring out ribs soon. It’s early in the morning, and it’s their special one-day sale item, and yet they didn’t have it ready. So I went to get mangos first, and looked for other good deals. I decided to buy 12 mangos for $3. I can keep some mangos on the counter to ripe, and some in the fridge. Mangos are delicious as fruit, and also as a side dish, such as mango salad, which goes great with BBQ ribs. I did not find other good deals. I came back to the meat isle, and found rib packages. I got 2 packages, about 10 pounds total, the regular price is $2.99 per pound, so I saved about $20. I’m glad that I heard the conversation between the two ladies and the butcher. Next time, I’ll know to ask, instead of just leaving there without getting what I plan to buy. At checkout, I paid $15.69 total.

Next week I will not need to stock up on meat, I will plan on going to the farmer’s market to buy vegetables. I love their vegetables, it’s cheap and fresh, I usually plan on going there once or twice a month. So this week I spent $70.11 total on food and grocery, next week I expect to spend even less.

The Baglady has some good advices on her recent post: Is Inflation Eating Away Your Savings , in which she mentioned her post on Wise Bread: Safeway Savings Rally-How I got 9 bags of groceries for $13. It’s quite a fun read. It’s quite helpful when someone gives you a detailed example of how they shop wisely.

Another post you may be interested in: How we stockpile food on Thriftiness Becomes Us.

Carnival

Canival of Ethics, Values, and Personal Finance-May Edition is live in the air. The posts under the category of ‘conscious consuming’ are saying what I’m saying here: be a conscious shopper. Ug99, the destruction of wheat crops and prices in our local supermarket mentioned the price of Parmesan cheese is up from $3.50 to over $6. I have noticed myself the prices of food on some items have increased steeply, not just 10% or 20%, but well over 50%, isn’t it amazing? Hank wrote a post, My Comcast bill is $160.24 per month; what am I possibly paying for? to ask for better alternative to replace his Comcast service, it is certainly an outrageous bill. If you are looking for budget travel in Europe, check out this post: Barcelona on 10 Euro per day for two people, I like to go there someday. Anyway, check out the Carnival yourself, there are a lot of good posts there. I’m going to read some more myself.

It has been over two months since the incident of my baby’s fall, and we are still getting statements and bills. It’s very shocking to see the amounts billed. Nothing says more than photos, so I scanned the bills we got so far and did some screenshots:

1.Ambulance bill: $2,727.09

It’s amazing that it costs so much to transfer a baby, who was not in a critical condition at all, from one hospital to another. The doctor went ahead and arranged ambulance transfer without giving us options first. They don’t ask you, they decide for you. We could have taken her there ourselves.

2.Hospitalization bill from Children’s Hospital: $12,288.27

We got a letter from our insurance, Kaiser, saying that they have paid $12,288.27 to Children’s Hospital. There are no details of the fees in the letter-because Children’s Hospital is outside of Kaiser Hospital system, it may take some time for us to receive a detailed letter of all the fees charged or we may have to request one-I can only assume that the bill is for one night stay in the Intensive Care Unit there, since there are two other bills/statements from Children’s Hospital. Can you believe that they charge over $12,000 dollars for one night stay there?

3.One of the Doctors fee from Children’s Hospital: $1,805.00

There were several doctors who came in to talk to us for a few minutes. I hope that we won’t get more bills to pay each doctor who spared a few minutes with us. I’m not quite sure who this doctor is, but I guess that she is the doctor who demanded the unnecessary abdominal CT scan despite of our objections, and now we and our insurance together have to pay her $1,805 for ordering the CT scan? This is totally unbelievable! Why so much money?

4.CT scan bill from Children’s Hospital: $789 each scan

As I mentioned in my post, we were very surprised to see that we are billed for two CT scans when the doctor only told us one.

How much we have to pay

Our out of pocket cost is $3000 maximum per person per year, and so far we paid about $2000 for it. It seems that we may end up paying $3000. So far the total is over $15,000 billed to my insurance. Isn’t it amazing that it costs so much for a baby to be examined and observed in the hospital, who actually did not need any medical treatment and did not show any sign of brain injury?

The measurements Insurance companies take to reduce their loss

We got a letter from our insurance to “obtain detailed information to determine if another party is responsible for the medical treatment provided” from us. They are hoping to recoup some of the costs from anther insurance company, which we do not have. Insurance companies are also known to reduce their loss by declining claims and dropping members, such as the recent news: Insurer asks docs to report on new patients with pre-existing conditions, including ‘pre-existing pregnancies’. I don’t understand why they don’t take any measurement to question the validity of doctors’ actions? By questioning the validity of doctors’ actions, they could place some limits on doctors, and reduce much of their loss by reducing the unnecessary medical procedures that are now so freely done by doctors.

Between Kaiser and Children’s Hospital

When the doctor in the ER of Kaiser Hospital where we admitted our baby told us that Maiya would be transferred to ICU of Children’s Hospital, intuitively I felt bad about it. Now two months later I could figure out more clearly. It would cost us much less if we have been transferred to another Kaiser instead of to a different hospital system, that’s what I gathered from the statements I got, for example, we would not have been billed $1,805 for a doctor’s fee. Really, for what? It would cost us only a few hundred dollars instead of three thousand if the doctor let Maiya to be observed over night in the ER of Kaiser where we admitted her, but because of lacking a neo surgeon on site and of the slim possibility that emergent conditions might occur, which is beyond the capacity for that doctor and that facility to handle, he went ahead to transfer her just in case.

Another reason that I don’t like about Children’s Hospital is that ’some physicians are independently contracted and Children’s Hospital is not liable to their actions’. When I read that, I frowned and did not feel like to sign on that piece of paper among others and handed them over to my husband. Of course he was not in a mood to read and just signed on everything.

We are not able to shop for hospitals or medical treatments

Because of such fact that we are not able to get a price first regarding to hospitals and medical treatments, we always get bills afterwards, I’m sharing with you the bills we got. I know for myself that I would like to know what I know now two, three months ago.

I started a thread about this incident on the forums on families.com, feel free to join the conversations there, and of course I love to hear from you here on my blog.

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Maiya was talking to her Daddy. She is a very nice and quiet baby, but sometimes she is very talkative. My husband and I joke about the coming days when we have no space to talk to each other because of two talkative girls we have.

This photo was taken on one of the Easter egg hunts. Katrina was hunting for eggs while Maiya was sitting on the lawn in her beautiful sky blue outfit, a lovely gift from our neighbor, which I just recently bleached too much and ruined the beautiful blue color. Well, at least nice photos were taken before that.