woman who reads too much (boxofdelights) wrote,
woman who reads too much
boxofdelights

health insurance dammit

I'm not going to put a 'politics' label on this, because this exact thing has been happening to me for 30 years, and I don't expect it to stop in my lifetime. This thing is: I have health insurance. I see a health care provider. I hand over my insurance card and my payment. A month later I get a bill from the health care provider. I call the health care provider. I talk to a phone-answerer; she doesn't know anything about anything, except that her screen says I still owe $X. I confirm that they have my insurance information, that they billed my insurance, that the services they billed were the services I received, which are covered by my insurance. I call the insurance company. They assure me that the health care provider's bill has been paid in full, and that I do not owe them any more money. I call the health care provider back. The phone-answerer says they'll look into it. Thirty days later I get another bill for the same charge, in pink, with threats to send it to a collections agency. Most often, another round of phone calls will settle it, though the health care provider never admits that they got anything wrong; they promise again to look into it, and this time I don't get another bill.

I'm so angry right now. I hate the phone and I hate arguing with people and my blood pressure reacts very very badly to threats, and there's nothing I can do except stew about it until tomorrow, because I picked up the mail when I came back in from walking the dog, which was just after 5:00.

I wonder how many people who are more phone-averse or less good with paperwork or just too damn busy or not as entitled to fairness as I think I am just cough up the double payment.

I wonder whether these things would happen to me so often if I had changed my name when I got married. They don't seem to happen to my non-Hispanic husband.

This entry was originally posted at http://boxofdelights.dreamwidth.org/305560.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Subscribe

  • the kids next door

    On Valentine's Day they left two valentines on my front porch, one from each of them, with two chocolates, shaped like a heart and a bee. The…

  • The Hidden Life of Trees, by Peter Wohlleben

    Half of the life of trees takes place underground, and almost all of it happens too slowly to catch our attention. Trees communicate with each other…

  • I saw comet!

    I went up to Masonville to watch "A Band Called Death", a movie about a Black proto-punk band in 1970's Detroit. (At the dark of the moon, Neal…

  • Post a new comment

    Error

    switch
    default userpic

    Your reply will be screened

    When you submit the form an invisible reCAPTCHA check will be performed.
    You must follow the Privacy Policy and Google Terms of use.
    Help
  • 1 comment