Rosemary Johnston Hawn of Lowell wasn't seeking a "slimmer figure," hoping to "look years younger," as a Northwest Indiana plastic surgeon's phone message promises.

Hawn, 64, and a diabetic, met the surgeon while hospitalized as a heart surgery patient at Saint Anthony Medical Center in Crown Point. She didn't know the physician before her March triple-bypass heart surgery. When her surgical wound wouldn't heal, her family physician recommended the plastic surgeon who treated her wound, while she was still a hospital patient, and in June performed a skin graft.

Despite the extensive and expensive medical care, Hawn said she felt lucky and relieved that she was covered by Anthem Indiana Blue Cross and Blue Shield, a dependable health plan that would pay all of the hospital and physician services, once she met her required co-payments and deductibles.

Or so she thought.

But once Hawn, a retired Gary schoolteacher living on a fixed income, was discharged and came home, she received a financial jolt -- an unexpected $10,000 bill for treatment. She unwittingly had joined a growing number of local patients entangled in payment disputes between their health plan and medical care providers.

Hawn said she feels slighted by "something underhanded" and now is forced to pay a much higher price for the care she received.

"He's very good, an excellent doctor," she said. "I have no qualms about the quality of care or work he did on me. I'm just mad at the insurance company and his office. It feels like I'm caught in a fight between them that shouldn't have included me. The hospital is in-network. Services performed in the hospital should be covered. This was done when I was an in-patient."

Her Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Indiana health plan did cover her hospital stay, heart surgery and most physician services, except for the plastic surgeon's bill.

Hawn had been hospitalized at Saint Anthony for weeks when her family doctor, Milton Gasparis of Hobart, referred her to the well-regarded specialist.

She arrived at the Saint Anthony emergency room March 21 with chest pain and was hospitalized. Heart surgeons performed a triple-bypass operation the next day. She was released May 2, but readmitted days later after suffering complications from diabetes with a surgical wound that refused to heal.

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