I am eternally grateful and LOVE that we have medical insurance and the ability to go to the best medical facilities and be treated by the best medical professionals in Cleveland, Ohio and probably at least in the United States if not worldwide.
I HATE medical bills. I know, who likes them? I don't think anyone does - but then I think, well - I already got the medical service and my child is well (within reason) - at least I didn't have to pay for it upfront. So that's a good thing - Right??!!
You'd think that Medical Billing should be an easy thing to understand. I'm an educated person, I have not only a Bachelors Degree but I also have a Masters from a pretty good school too! So I know I'm competent enough to be able to understand this whole process.....Between my husband and his employer they pay the insurance company a hefty premium to insure us - we then pay co-pays and deductibles for a specified amount and then insurance kicks in 80% and we pay 20% until we meet a certain maximum. Yes, this can be confusing and we sort of have a little "pickle" called a state funded supplemental insurance. This insurance only kicks in after our main insurance has paid and for only those services that are considered investigative or diagnostic in nature and reference my child's genetic disorder - the state funded insurance is suppose to pick these items up 100% after the fact.
So...ideally it looks like we should be in pretty good shape when it comes to medical bills for my son. Sigh...its not the case. We are now battling the medical billing monster, and I'm convinced that the customer service representatives are hired on the basis of the following criteria: they can only be a-holes and serve as gatekeepers. They know absolutely nothing about the billing process, they just merely answer the phone and are instructed to piss you off until you've had enough and figure its much easier to pay the damn bill then to deal with them, the imbecile, on the other end.
But not only is the customer service representative hired to wear you down, the person who codes the bills and sends them to insurance for "payment" is also trained to not send them to "insurance" but to you the insured patient (or in our case the guardian/parent of the patient). Then by the time you realize that the bill was never sent to "insurance" first, you get the lovely phone call from any random number of "collection agencies" wanting to know why you haven't paid the bill and looking for payment in full. Its always fun to get calls from collection agencies - its almost like feeling like a criminal. I take paying bills and my finances very seriously. I spent the better part of my adult life single - and I worked very hard to have an excellent credit rating. So I get antsy when the medical bill collector rings me up! I'll be damned if I'm going to let medical bills that are miscoded or mis-submitted ruin my credit scores.
So if all that isn't frustrating enough, my favorite thing is to get bills from the medical service provider and all they have on the bill is the date of service, the insured's name and the amount of money they would like you to pay. No where on the bill is what the payment is for? My son sees a lot of doctors, and often on the same day to optimize babysitting of my daughter and trips down to the main campus. So I rarely have any recollection of what "service" was rendered on any particular day. Its not bad enough that you get medical bills, but you have to pay to park there too! I REFUSE to pay a bill when it doesn't tell me what service was rendered. I would never dream to pay a credit card bill without looking at my statement first and I'm sure this is true with most people. So why is it so difficult for the medical provider to put on their bills the service that was rendered? I'm told by both the "medical facility" and the "collection agency" that all that information is on the explanation of benefits statement that we receive from the insurance company. Unless my husband is seeing them and hiding them, I have yet to see one of these statements in the last 2 1/2 years. So now they want me to audit my insurance explanation of benefits with the bills received. WHAT??? Pardon my swearing here - so the insurance company asks us to pay a shit load of money in premiums, co-pays and deductibles and the medical provider gets money from my insurance and me - and they want me to fucking audit bills?? WHY, is it that I pay them so much and I have to do their work for them too???
My son was in the hospital for 19 days. In actuality, it was a complication to a procedure that caused this very long stay in the hospital, not some arbitrary illness. We don't blame anyone for the incident but I'd be lying if I said I'm not frustrated. In some ways - I feel like the medical facility should harbor some of the financial responsibility of this complication. Its not like my son had this problem before he walked in the door, but we were given the verbal possible complications of his procedure and we signed the consent form - so it is what it is. To me, a good faith and good customer service gesture would be to allow us to have more than 90 days to pay a bill that is over $5000. No, instead they offer us the opportunity to deal with a credit card company to float us a loan and pay 7+% in interest. No thank you, we'll dig deep into savings for this one and hope to God we don't hit a "rainy" day anytime soon.
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