I just had to vent a little bit: I got a bill from Samaritan Health Services today. It's the third time I've gotten a bill from them since April.
The reason why this is bad is because I have already met my $1,000 out-of-pocket maximum for the year. I met that in February. This means that I do not have to pay any more medical expenses out of pocket for 2010.
I get my statements from insurance explaining what they've paid. The rest is to be written off (or, in insurance-speak, "adjusted off") by the hospital.
For some reason, the billing folks at Samaritan keep missing these adjustments. So, I've gotten three bills, running anywhere from $80 to $200, when I shouldn't have received any at all from them.
I've had to make three telephone calls in the last three months - after I have to dig out my insurance "explanation of benefits" statement - to Samaritan billing and explain that I should not have gotten the bill, that they messed up, and that I don't plan to pay the statement. Each time, they apologize.
I asked the person (Chrissy) today if there was anyway they could flag my account to make sure that I don't get any more bills this year. She wasn't sure if she could.
Frustrating!
Can you imagine? What if I hadn't been keeping track of what I've paid out of pocket? I could have paid an extra $400-500 because of this. I can imagine some patients who don't understand our convoluted health care system would go ahead and pay this bill. This is exactly what a cancer patient does NOT need.
Sheesh.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Yes, another post!
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1 comment:
I know how frustrating this can be and am glad you are keeping up with it. One of the crazier things that I had happen once is that the insurance company paid for a scan (after deductible) and denied the radiologist who read the scan. Turns out the way the coding was done they had approved the scan but since the billing for the radiologist was done separately they didn't have that down as approved. I finally got it straight but it took a lot of phone calls and being put on hold. That stuff drives me crazy.
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