[tigerpaw75]

Angie,

Very glad that your surgery experience went well. I wish she just had the single level problem like you - we would have signed up for one of the clinical trials (I think they are doing the Freedom disc now). If you don't mind saying, did you pay out of pocket or did your insurance cover the procedure? If it was out of pocket do you mind saying approximately how much it was? We were quoted about $30K for the ADR at L5-L4 in conjunction with a fusion at S1-L5 that our insurance (BC/BS of Alabama) will pay for. I assume the insurance company would be billed $40-50K just for the fusion, hospital stay, anesthesiologist, etc.

I don't think either me or my wife doubt that the TBI doctors are among the leaders in the U.S. (and the world) and perhaps the best, it was the disorganized and unresponsive way they dealt with our very serious questions regarding the costs. TBI obviously knows that almost all insurance does not cover these procedures, and most folks don't have $20-30K (or more0 laying around to drop on a medical procedure - that's why most folks have medical insurance. So it would seem that they should know prettly closely how much the more common procedures cost, and be able to respond quickly, and perhaps even offer advice to patients to get their ADR claims reimbursed through appeal procedures. Instead we got passed around from one admin person to another and it seemed no one was keeping notes or putting anything in our file, as every time we called to folllow up on a question we talked to someone new who seemed to know nothing about the question we asked the week before that had not been answered.

And not to mention that Dr. Blumenthal was $10,000 off on the price he told us verbally in February ($20K) vs. what we were quoted this week ($30K).

When looking at India, I'm worried, but we are getting the contact info on several other lumbar ADR patients who had surgery with Dr. Rajakumar at Wockhardt Hospital in Bangalore. If all that checks out - is it worth double to go to TBI?

Thanks again for your comments. I am still holding out a faint hope that we will somehow end up at TBI...and find a way to work out the money.