!@#$#@@#$$@@! Why is incompetence rampant?
So SD is in weekly speech and occupational therapy for her issues. This means we get a lot of bills from the hospital. Like a lot. The first steps of the evaluation took place January 23, 2015. Months went by, several months, and we hadn't gotten any bills. Finally in August I asked the receptionist about it and she said "Oh, sometimes they run a month or two behind." I told her we still hadn't gotten bills from January. She says "that is a little unusual, don't worry they will catch up with you!!!" Oh I have no doubt they will lady, but I don't want to get hit with a $3,000 bill out of the blue. In early September the hospital gives DH a collection call at work. He found out the reason why we hadn't been getting any bills was because they were sending them all to BM's old address down state. DH changed SD's address to ours (for about the third time) and we slowly started getting bills in.
For some inexplicable reason, we are still getting bills in for service on January 23rd. Why, I have no idea. But, whenever I get them in, I pay them, figure out BM's portion, give her copies of the paperwork, wait the 28 days, and then turn it in to the FOC to get tacked onto her child support. The woman at the FOC argues with me every. single. time. Today DH dropped the paperwork off and nearly started screaming at the lady. She digs through the paperwork every time and always hassles us about the service date being 1/23/2015 saying the bill is too old she can't take it. Ummm....the statement date is Oct 22nd. I can't pay them and turn them in until I get them. I don't know what to tell you. She pulled that again with DH and he told her again that the statement date was Oct 22nd. She asked if insurance had paid it. Well, obviously not that portion since we got a bill. Then she asked what the original amount of the bill was. You're looking at it lady. Then she asked when the first notice was sent to us. It says first notice in big, bold letters across the top of the page. You can't miss it.
So she said she would send it through but if BM objects then we won't get reimbursed her portion.
For extra fun, we got a letter in the mail the other day from a collection agency for another bill from the hospital. DH called the hospital today and found out that the reason we hadn't paid it was because we hadn't gotten it. It was another bill from 1/23/15 and they were again sending the bills to BM's old address down state. I find this very odd since we had been getting other bills from that date but apparently not these bills. The hospital said when you call to change your address it only affects services going forward, not services you received in the past so even though we tried to change our address to get the bills to pay them apparently you can't do that. So now when I turn this bill in to the FOC I'm going ot get hassled by the clerk about it being too old.
How the hell am I supposed to pay them if we don't get them until a year later? And all SD had on 1/23/15 was an evaluation by the physical therapist. Why on earth are we getting all of these separate bills for an evaluation by the PT? I think DH and I are just going to have to go down there and speak to a supervisor to get it all straightened out.
UPDATE: So DH got a call back from the hospital today and they left a message saying they would pull the bill out of collections (which is good, I was not happy about the credit ding that would cause) and that yes in fact they CAN do a blanket change of address. He is calling back to demand a copy of the statement be emailed to him today and to find out why we keep getting bills from the same service date. Hopefully we can get something resolved. I also told him I wanted a letter from the hospital to give to the woman at FOC explaining why the bills were late but something tells me that won't happen and even if it does it won't do any good.
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Comments
So they can find you for
So they can find you for collections but can't send the original bill? Idiots.
What really amazes me is we
What really amazes me is we have been getting bills and I pay them as soon as they come in. Apparently we just haven't been getting all the bills. We have also had problems with them applying payments to the proper account. Last month we got a second notice for a bill in and I said what the hell, I paid that. So we called the hospital and said hey, what's going on, we paid this a month ago why are are we getting a second notice. Turns out SD has two accounts with the hospital. I have one of the accounts set up with online bill pay through my bank and every time a bill comes in I just pay it through the online banking system. Apparently one of the bills was from the other account so it didn't get credited and they sent it to some other account that wasn't even hers
The strangest part of the whole thing is that the woman DH spoke to yesterday said last month we paid $25 on the delinquent account. How the hell did we do that? We aren't getting statements for that account and certainly have not gotten any second notices or nasty grams. Haven't gotten any phone calls except for the call back in August when we figured out they were being sent to the wrong address. Nobody mentioned anything about being delinquent last month when we called to find out why we were getting a second notice regarding a bill we had paid.
I really do think I'm just going to have to go down there and holler at someone.
BM lives 3 hours away and has
BM lives 3 hours away and has been to a grand total of one therapy appointment in the 6 months SD has been going to them twice a week and that was only because the CPS caseworker made her.
I get the distinct impression BM doesn't want anything to do with any bills whatsoever and gets ticked off when we give her paperwork detailing her portion. It's only 23% it's not like it's all of it. She just doesn't want to pay.
The school says she does not
The school says she does not qualify. We were told that not only does she have to show disability on their assessments, which according to them, she doesn't, but we also have to prove that her disability is such that it is affecting her access to education which, as far as we can tell thus far, it isn't.
I spoke to the speech therapist about it and was basically told that unless her speech was so bad people had problems understanding her then she didn't qualify for services. Of course, pronunciation isn't really her problem. She has a bit of a lisp but her problems are more language acquisition and expressive language problems and she is doing pretty well academically so the school said she didn't qualify for services.
The way it works in our
The way it works in our county is we have a FOC rep but we turn all the bills into a different woman who handles the medical stuff.......and yet still can't manage to read the statement from the hospital. You would think she would be able to by now but evidently not. His FOC caseworker is, shall we say, not the best. He has called about things and she flat out won't return calls. There was a period last year where BM went about 2 months without seeing SD and I told him then he needed to call the caseworker and tell her what the deal was so that BM can't come back later and say he wouldn't let her see SD or something like that. He called multiple times and the caseworker never called him back so he finally just gave up.
The paperwork for enforcing the medical bills is very confusing. It's only two forms but somehow they manage to give 3 different time lines. Basically, the bills have to be submitted within one year of the service date or the FOC will not enforce them. Alternatively, it also says the bills must be submitted to BM within 28 days of the insurance company paying on it though I'm not really sure how that works since the bills don't go out until weeks if not months after insurance pays but whatever. Or, they have to be submitted within 6 months of the final denial from the insurance company. If any of those criteria are not met the FOC will not enforce the court order regarding medical expenses.
I told DH today that the next time the woman hassles me about it I will say if BM objects then we will go in front of a judge and someone from the hospital can be subpoenaed to come down and tell the judge the reason why the bills are so late but I am submitting them. If she doesn't like it she can take it up with the hospital herself.
I went through something
I went through something similar with my ex. He had a hospital visit and I fought for almost a year to the day to get the darn thing paid. I had an HMO with Blue Cross Blue Shield so we're talking a really good plan and company. They kept denying him because they had him as working for a company that he had never worked for in his life and listed as the insured. He was covered under me and I worked for a completely different company than what they had listed on the EOB.
A million phone calls and customer service reps later, I FINALLY got it straightened out with the last phone call. I swear they do it on purpose to see if you'll just give in and pay it all. What was that movie called? Nearly a year to the day - highly suspicious.
You just have to keep screaming until the right person decides to fix it.