DAN Insurrance will not cover your chamber treatment any more!!!!!!

Greg Mossman <mossman@qnet.com> wrote:
>Well I think about other destinations even without the nickel and diming.
>Bonaire, for instance. Two weeks and counting.

ah, good. You can report on the level of crime - real or imagined!?

I'm going to Thailand in a month, but probably no diving on this one.

--
Jason O'Rourke www.jor.com

"Greg Mossman" <mossman@qnet.com> wrote in message
news:3fd95cbe$0$75804$6c56adcd@news.qnet.com...

> Well I think about other destinations even without the nickel and diming.
> Bonaire, for instance. Two weeks and counting.


Well, there is a fair amount of nickel and diming on Bonaire as well. Though
I have always found Bonaire a worthwhile destination as far as Caribbean
diving goes. When will you be there, I'll be on island from 12/20/03 to
1/4/04?

"William Rampartson" <nosp@m.com> wrote in message
news:dvoCb.42$SO3.30295@news.uswest.net...

> Well, there is a fair amount of nickel and diming on Bonaire as well.
Though
> I have always found Bonaire a worthwhile destination as far as Caribbean
> diving goes. When will you be there, I'll be on island from 12/20/03 to
> 1/4/04?

12/26/03-1/4/04

Habitat

"Jason O'Rourke" <jor@soda.csua.berkeley.edu> wrote in message
news:brbfgr$hp8$1@agate.berkeley.edu...
> BenDavison <bendavison@aol.com> wrote:
> > Some divers who only dive Cozumel don't carry insurance because they
> >believe their dollar a dive insurance covers them. They may be in for a
rude
> >surprise. Don't dive Cozumel without a bona fide dive accident policy.
> >
> > That said, a dollar from divers helps keep the chamber operating.
See it
> >as a donation.
>
> How many different donations are we paying now to visit Cozumel? In
addition
> to the dollar for the chamber, there is the per diem for the "Park" and
the
> always increasing exit tourist visa. That sort of nickel and diming makes
> me think about other destinations.

Ya mean like the places with no chamber? No park protection? Those kinda
places?

bendavison@aol.com (BenDavison) wrote in message news:<20031210110744.14191.00000633@mb-m28.aol.com>...
> Here's a piece on Cozumel Insurance we published in Undercurrent last year. > It sets the record straight

Hardly.

> Chamber Insurance it Isn't
>
> If a Cozumel dive operator collects a dollar from you to buy "Cozumel
> Chamber Insurance, " don't ever expect to use it. It's not insurance.
>
> Heidi Piccolo, RN, Manager Hiperbarica de Cozumel (HDC) and Mauricio
> Moreno, Manager, SSS/Buceo Medico Mexicano chamber; told us that "dollar
> insurance" only ensures that the latter facility will accept your regular
> insurance coverage for chamber treatments rather than request cash up front.
> If you have no insurance, you will be immediately responsible for the bill.
> Further, your dollar insurance pays not a peso. In fact, Hiperbarica de Cozumel
> does not participate in dollar insurance, considering it a "disservice and
> misleading." HDC may require cash up front, no matter whether you
> have "dollar insurance."
>
> Several shops themselves are confused regarding dollar insurance.

So is one magazine publisher, named Ben Davison. It strikes me as a
bit or yellow journalism that is not below some other articles I´ve
read in UNDERCURRENT.

The $1 charged is not insurance per se. For one thing, there's no
policy of coverage! But it "facilitates" the patient for treatement
in THAT chamber. (A parallel story is what happened to the Belize
chamber years ago that UNDERCURRENT never had the story straight).


It was the "extortion" by the Belize chamber had in 1993.

Hughes Fleet. In a nutshell, it tells divers:

"DAN insurance WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED by us. if you give us a $10
voluntary donation, we'll treat you should you need the
treatment;
otherwise, you'll have to come up with $500 per hour for chamber
cost and no less than $2500 pounds Stirling per hour for the
R.A.F.
transport, ALL IN CASH, and YOU collect from DAN later; or else
...."

Below is my post recent post (2003) relating to it:

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm...&output=gplain

*> But the rumor arose not because DAN didn't pay a claim, but because
*> a claim was never filed -- according to Joel Dovenbarger (DAN
Director
*> of Medical Services) with whom I spoke about the Belize incident.

The chamber assumed the patient filed but DAN didn't pay; and the
patient assumed that because he was DAN insured that the chamber would
automatically file for the treatment expenses. The latter is NOT
possible, because the patient has to file under his PRIMARY insurance
first before DAN would consider its part of the accident insurance!

That's the way things SHOULD work. And that's the way things work.


The $ "voluntary donation" extracted by one chamber there plays the
SAME
role as the $2 "donation" extracted by the Belize chamber in 1993.
They
are NOT insurance per se, but they help cover the administrative cost
of
ensuring that a patient FILES for insurance, not only with DAN, but
with
his PRIMARY insurance.

My wife and I have used the Cozumel chambers about 5 times,
collectively
over the years, on minor ear problems as well as my voluntary seeking
of
diagnostic checks when I experienced subclinical symptoms of DCS.

In each case, we PAID IN FULL at the time of the treatment and was
subsequently reimbursed 100% by our primary and DAN insurances.

In TWO instances of my voluntary requests of "diagnostic checks", the
chamber physician, after giving me the requisite examination, sent me
out without charging me anything, even though they knew I had DAN and
primary insurance, AND my dive shop was one of those paying the $1.
(The shops sometimes include it in the dive charge without letting
the diver know, just to eliminate the kind of noise Ben Davison and
others were making).

For
> example, a large, long-established and reputable shop: "<...> I know that
> for my contribution per diver I get an adequate facility and treatment of
> my clients without prior consideration of finances, "

That statement is EXACTLY right! That's why it's long-established and
reputable, because it knows Cozumel better than Ben Davison.

>
> Some divers who only dive Cozumel don't carry insurance because they
> believe their dollar a dive insurance covers them. They may be in for a
> rude surprise.

Not necessarily, though the advise of having DAN as "dive insurance"
is
sound and should be urged. For a bill such as $50 for minor ear
examination and treatement, the patient's primary insurance would
cover 80%, so the out-of-pocket payment by the patient (with or
without DAN or other dive insurance) is a difference of only $10.

If by "rude surprise", you mean, as the Belize "extortion" threatened,
that a bent diver would NOT be treated at all, without paying up front
BEFORE a treatment, then you had better send yourself or your writer
back down to the chambers and get the story straight!


> Don't dive Cozumel without a bona fide dive accident policy.

Why pick out Cozumel in your statement? That is the sound advice for
diving ANYWHERE, with or without a local chamber!

>
> That said, a dollar from divers helps keep the chamber operating. See it
> as a donation.

It also "facilitates" the relation between the local chamber and the
diver's bona fide HEALTH insurance policy AND dive insurance policy.

BTW, the chambers my wife and I went to in most recent visits was the
one affiliated with DAN. We had to pay IN FULL after treatment. It
was OUR obligation to make the claims with our insurance AND DAN to
recover 100% of the charges paid.

-- Bob.