Cindy Blackburn – Alex Lee Employee at Lowes Foods:
My name is Cindy Blackburn. I work for Lowes Foods in Wilksboro, North Carolina.
I am in produce. I do pick and prep. That’s cutting all fresh vegetables, putting them in a container and putting them out on a wall to be sold.
Cindy learned about Bluebook by accident when her husband suffered an abdominal aortic aneurysm on October 7, 2018, followed by an abscess on his brain three days after Thanksgiving. Both required life-saving emergency surgeries, extended hospital stays and rehab. Thankfully, he survived. But soon, the bills began to mount.
Cindy: Those bills did mount very quickly. Once they started coming in, it was like every day my mailbox was filled.
I have a box at home that’s just loaded with bills. I just keep looking at them and it’s heartbreaking because it’s like, how am I going to meet all those bills.
One of the helicopter bills, when it was all said and done, said that I owed $20,800.
It’s very devastating when you have a savings account and you went through it within a matter of months and still have bills to pay.
People don’t realize what the devastation can do to yourself. Besides worrying about your spouse, here you are looking at all these bills.
One of the places that they sent my husband for a CT scan was in the Bluebook.
I received a check about a month and a half later for $25. That’s how I started using the Bluebook, and I used it for every procedure that he’s had.
It saves me money, but it also saves the company money.
We’re self-insured, and if you have a procedure that costs $3,000 – which some of those CT scans are at the hospital – and you go and you look up on the Bluebook and there’s a company that might charge you $1,000, that’s a very good savings.
The Bluebook is very helpful. It’s not hard to use. It’s really not rocket science. You just go and do it.
I’m not the best person for computers and things like that, but it’s simple. It walks you through it.
This is one of the checks I got from the Bluebook. I was like, this is awesome. I can save money. I can actually save money. And If I save enough money, I might get a check.
I’ve already got a check for $100. I was shocked. It’s really true.
I received a check by picking a green facility. It’s amazing.
It’s money in your pocket. And money in the company’s pocket.