As many of you know there has been quite a bit of major medical activity in our household in the last year - the arrival of Rylee, some dental work, and Joseph's knee surgery (and cancer scare). Incredibly, we are still dealing with the bills, and I don't mean just working to pay them off. After being told that we had 60 paid physical therapy visits through our insurance, they are now trying to bill us for Joseph's last month of therapy which was no where near the 60 visits. I honestly ignored the bill last month because I thought it would work itself out with insurance, but the new bill came today and has more than tripled. Needless to say I will be making a phone call tomorrow, and I will try to be nice.....until I can't be.
We encountered a similar problem with a well-child visit for Rylee earlier this year. At the time she had been to 2 visits that were exactly the same other than 1 visit we saw the doctor and the other visit we saw the physician's assistant due to a scheduling conflict. The PA visit was billed to us at over $200, and I just about flipped. Fortunately, I can work online with that portion of our medical network and started a conversation with a nice person in their billing department. A couple of months later I still had to call my insurance to find out what was going on - lo and behold they were trying to claim out of network for the PA. I explained that I'd never encountered anyone in our system that was out of network (it's half the point of being in that system), but insurance said I had to clear it up with the clinic. Plus, they kept referring to the PA as a doctor and ignored me when I told them she was a PA. I emailed my contact in billing to explain what insurance had told me, and a month later I got a phone call telling me the bill had been written off. Yay! Victory for me! I'm pretty sure that had submitted the PA as a doctor, and she didn't show up in network because she's not a doctor.
This isn't my first rodeo versus insurance and medical bills. I am almost positive that we overpaid when Joseph broke his foot. I was younger and more naive then and just paid whatever came in the mail. Not so much anymore. I try to be very meticulous about looking over the bills and comparing them to our account or the last bill to make sure we aren't getting hosed. It's very frustrating. I just don't understand why it has to be so difficult. A person is under so much stress when dealing with a medical issue (even a happy one like the birth of a child). Then, you have to sort out and figure out and pay these complicated coded bills. I just wish you could go to the doctor, get treated, and let insurance pay the bill. Why else do I pay insurance $200+ a month out of my check, and my employer pays them way more than that? I know my circumstances are a little more complicated because we have an HSA plan, so we have to pay the negotiated amount until we meet our deductible. After that point it's 100% covered or a small co-pay. Hello, my husband had massive testing and a surgery before the end of February, I should think everything thereafter would fall into the covered or co-pay pool. UGH!
Well, it's starting to seriously thunder here, and I want to go shower with my new White Tea & Cactus Scentsy Layers stuff that came in today before the storm gets any worse (or time gets any later). I have a thing about showering when it storms. I'm sure that's extremely weird, but I just can't do it. Wish me luck with the PT billing office tomorrow. I'll let you know what happens.
~Heather
Day 10 of 365 (Wahoo, I made it to double digits!)
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