I never knew how much love a heart could hold, until they called me mom

Monday, June 23, 2008

Sick to death of medical billing!!!!!!

I think it is just my hormones or something out of whack... but I am so tired of dealing with life... well, okay, not life, but I feel so tired. I am tired of dealing with dishonest medical billing for right now! We have had so many bills from different companies that were paid by our insurance 100% but they are still billing us ( thank goodness we were warned that this might happen and have kept every statement sent by our insurance!) . The oxygen company was paid 100%. The other day I got a really rude letter demanding payment or legal action would be taken. I went through the insurance statements and found all of the payments to this company and found they were paid. So I called. I called the company and as she was telling me that we were going to be sent in for legal action it pops up that OH, guess what, the bill had been paid in full! Oh, whoops, so sorry. Okay, sorry, you can threaten me but now, oops! So, the ambulance that took Nate to the hospital billed the insurance wrong (as far as we can tell). They paid a portion of the bill immediately (100% of it I might add) within 60 days but because of the mess up more had to be paid. So in May they paid the rest of the bill 100% but I keep getting this bill for $48.49 and demanding payment. Okay... I get that billing the insurance is courtesy but still, it wasn't our fault it was messed up to begin with and our insurance has been awesome (and I don't usually say that about insurance companies because our old insurance was horrible!). It doesn't say why it is that much, just that we now had a 71 cent service charge on top of the $48.49 bill. So I called, it took me 7 tried to finally get through. The first lady I spoke to was all kinds of snotty to me and I was being nice. She informed me that it had been 6 months (hello... he was flown to Salt Lake in January and it was paid in May... maybe their adding skills are the reason for the messed up billing????) and it was a courtesy to bill the insurance and THAT was the service charge for our insurance not paying for 6 months. I explained again that it WAS paid in a timely matter, that their billing had messed up because the insurance had to be rebilled for different charges and that it was all paid and wasn't that a little excessive considering the bill was PAID IN FULL??? She again exclaimed in a loud and rude voice that IT HAD BEEN SIX MONTHS!!!!!!! WHAT part of him being life flighted in January and the bill being paid in FULL, completely, in May can they not understand??? So in the plainest English I know, I explained the whole thing AGAIN... and then asked to speak to her manager... And explained AGAIN... to somebody who was even more nasty than the first. I finally said in a nice voice, "Look, I am not sure if you have ever experienced having a child life flighted, almost die, spend time in the hospital critically ill, come home with a feeding tube, oxygen, taking care of a family and trying to make sure that every single place and doctor billed the insurance right as to avoid a $50 service fee, but I really had no choice as to your services and you have been paid in full for those services and maybe it means nothing to you but it means gas in my tank for me so I really don't understand this!" She rudely said it had been SIX months and they only give 60 days. WHERE are they getting six months from??? Are they going by his birthday or what? The DATE OF SERVICE says January 10th, the bill was paid mid May... HOW has this been 6 months??? So then she tells me, "FINE... JUST THIS ONCE we will take that off your account!" Ummmm... okay, well sheesh, I surely hope I never need their services again but if I do, you can believe I will hound the insurance to make sure they read this company's mind and get them paid in full before they even bill us. I said thank you and she again informs me that it had been six months. Okay, I should have hung up but I told her that January to May was not 6 months and they had really deceitful business dealings but me and my 15 kids surely appreciated her being able to purge my account of that $48.49 bill. And then I sat in the parking lot of the grocery store and cried for 15 minutes because, well... I don't know why. I just felt like the weight of the world has been sitting on my shoulders and that was the straw that finally broke me!!!

2 comments:

Kate said...

Oh honey your not broken just a little bent but everything has to bend to keep from breaking. You are so strong and your HF made you that way. No little insurance snot could ever break you. You got love in FL!

talitha said...

Ugh, insurance stuff...right there with you.

Hang in there...and next time, call me and we'll talk about it!!

T