Day 274 - Thursday September 13, 2012

We had a much needed day at home today.  Mark and Tyler played games with Bridgett while I reconciled check books and paid medical bills.  Stephany just had her lower braces put on yesterday and so she is feeling that miserable feeling even worse today than yesterday so she rested.  So, it seems that 95% of the people that you deal with regarding medical bills are just easy to work with and really just nice people.  Then there are the other 5%.  They get annoyed when you ask for any information and just say pay the bill--no matter what.  They do not care about whether there is any problem with the insurance claim etc they just say pay the bill and if it's wrong we will refund the money.  There is only one bill that I paid back in April that it turns out I wasn't supposed to pay and I still have not been able to get the money back--$422.  I received a bill showing the insurance adjustment and I knew we had to meet the deductible and hadn't paid any bills yet so I paid this bill.  Then I found out from my insurance agent that this place had submitted the bill incorrectly and if it had been submitted correctly the insurance company would have paid it in full.  So now they need to resubmit and refund my money and it still hasn't happened. So that doesn't work for me to just pay the bill no matter what.  Anyway, I spent quite a bit of time trying to straighten out an account where I had already paid the bill over a month ago but they didn't credit it correctly and so they turned it over to collection.  This is one of those offices that was so hard to work with initially and this is the gal that was so rude to my insurance agent on the phone as well.  So when I called to tell them that it had been previously paid and the check cleared our bank they said not their problem--my problem.  I have to prove by copying and faxing the cancelled check that it was paid.  Wow!  Their internal problem and I have to straighten it out!  I mean just WOW!  There are still claims (quite a few actually) from December that have not fully processed and our agent says that we are not responsible for them until the insurance company finishes processing them.  I just wish they were all processed and we could pay them and then just forget about it!  My living room table has been covered with bills, insurance explanation of benefits and the like for months now and it will be great when we can just move everything upstairs to the filing cabinet and be done!