The Red Tape Chronicles
Laura just sent me this link to an article on MSNBC:
Scott Fedyshyn and his wife recently brought home a bouncing baby boy — and an unexpected $600 medical bill. But Fedyshyn, a trained billing consultant, fought back. He demanded itemized bills from his doctor explaining each charge, and why his health insurance wouldn’t cover some items.
Soon, he got another statement from the doctor’s office – but this one came with a $20 refund check.
Laura and I can both attest to this happening to us. When Ethan, our 2nd child, was born we started receiving bills for thousands of dollars at a time. Laura, being a medical coder and having worked in billing (so she knows both sides of the fence), knew that our insurance should have covered everything except $500 ($250 on ‘diagnosis’ of pregnancy, and $250 on delivery) thanks to a special ‘maternity plan’ we had.
It took several months of arguing with their billing and coding departments, which I started with but it quickly got waaay too technical. Laura was undeterred and kept fighting it until it was finally discovered that someone along the way coded one of Laura’s trips as an experimental procedure, then bumping the rest of the pregnancy into some special category that insurance wouldn’t cover.
It was eventually resolved, but had we not dealt with that it would have easily cost over $5k. The moral of the story, several of them in fact:
- Know your Insurance Coverage
- don’t be afraid to ask questions or object to bills
- Marry into someone who knows the medical field.
I cannot overstate the importance of that third one.
via The Red Tape Chronicles – MSNBC.com.
