Victory for Me
I went to the doctor waaaay back on January 15th for my annual physical. In addition to the giggles of the usual girlie exam, this always includes a trip over to the lab for bloodwork. The doctor’s office had no issue billing my insurance right away, and correctly. The lab, on the other hand, has been a battle for the last 6 months. First, they billed me instead of my insurance, so of course I wasn’t paying that bill. There’s no point in paying for affordable health insurance if you’re not going to use it, right? So I called the lab, and it turned out that they didn’t get my new insurance information off of the paperwork from the doctor. (Curious how they didn’t seem to have the OLD insurance either… wonder how many people just pay their bills without asking questions?) So I spent several minutes on the phone relaying all the information from my insurance card, and was promised it would get taken care of.
Except it wasn’t. I continued to receive bills from the lab, with increasingly dire threats on them. I continued to call with no results. I mailed a photocopy of my insurance card with the bill. Still, they threatened to take me to collections. Finally, I looked up the fax number for the administration for the lab, and contacted them directly. I sent them a copy of the bill, a copy of my insurance card, and a very nice *cough* letter about how it shouldn’t take 6 months and several phone calls to get this ironed out, and what do I need to do to get this taken care of? I’ll be happy to pay as soon as it’s been sent to my insurance company.
Lo and behold, a few weeks later, I finally got a postcard from my insurance company that a claim had been filed on my behalf. More than 6 months and a lot of aggravation after the fact. Of course, my insurance company is only paying like $6 out of the entire bill, but it’s the principle of the matter. Besides, if I’m going to have to pay (almost) the entire amount of the bill, it’s damn sure going to be applied to my deductible!
But it’s finally settled, thank goodness! I was tired of getting threatened by the lab when the problem was entirely theirs!
