I don't know about 211. I'll check. My small town probably doesn't; the city the hospital is in probably does.

Medicare is tough. It's good if you aren't sick but by definition if you have it you probably are sick. They eventually paid for my ankle surgery (outpatient so I owed 20%), numerous casts, boot, splint and brace, etc. pretty well and the hospital wound up writing off some of it. On the other hand I started PT in Aug of last year and still don't know whether I owe them more than what I paid as a guesstimate to save 20% or not. I'm a month from from being a year out from finishing PT and still the claims haven't processed apparently. IP psych is the hardest. It's cheaper if you choose the HMO route but here (middle of nowhere) the only HMOs for disabled people are crappy and I want freedom to go to the hospital where I go for psych care and those HMOs don't allow this. They also would force me out of IP a lot faster than Medicare will.

If you qualify for spend-down Medicaid that helps a lot. I'm kind of in a blank area where I get spend-down but the amount is so big that it's almost impossible to meet. It was met with my ankle surgery but it got so messed up that I wound up just paying because I couldn't get the right people to coordinate and I was too depressed to fight it out over a few hundred dollars at most. It was met with my IP stay but only for a little bit that isn't going to lower this payment significantly.

Thanks for the 211 information!