What a Mess

We often hear of health insurance problems, that the insurer doesn’t pay. We’ve just had the opposite problem. Last week out of the blue we received a check from the insurance company. There was no explanation, just that we should receive more details in a few days. If not, call the phone number on our card.

There was no follow-up letter, so I did phone — Tuesday and yesterday. Tuesday the insurance company said it was for a test Andy had done in January. If we hadn’t paid the provider we should send the check on to them.

After I hung up Andy remembered we had received a bill but I had taken care of it. So I checked my notes and the provider had said the insurance company hadn’t paid, but when I checked with the insurance company they said they had. So I got the check number and date, and called the provider back. The gal said they would look into it and get back to me. A few days later they did phone and apologize — the insurance had paid and we didn’t owe anything.

So I phoned the insurance company again yesterday and asked what was going on. Apparently they had sent the check out but for some reason stopped payment on it — they were paying us instead. We were supposed to sign the check over to the provider and mail it to them.

So last night we signed the check over and included our original bill plus a letter explaining what had transpired before and what the insurance company had told us to do. We made photocopies of everything because we’re paranoid. We want to be prepared if the check gets lost in the mail or the person opening the envelope doesn’t read our letter or whatever. We’ve learned it pays to document transactions like this. We were certainly glad we had taken good notes earlier. Otherwise we wouldn’t have remembered any of the details.

Have you ever had an experience like this?


 

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9 Responses to What a Mess

  1. Rummuser says:

    No. But it does sound very complicated!

  2. bikehikebabe says:

    Tom deals with finance & says we haven’t had any problems for a long time. The health care (Medicare + secondary insurance) has worked well, but he does keep watch over all the finance.

  3. Audra E says:

    When I stopped laughing, I thought about the mysterious payments we get from Blue Cross/Blue Shield usually in early winter. Sorry, they say, we didn’t do things right the first time, so here’s your money. So far, I’ve gotten away with just depositing the checks and forgetting about it. (Keeping the paperwork, of course.) But your story is a truly cautionary tale.

    Documenting like mad is not paranoid! We had an identity theft scare last month, and you can be sure I now have a bulging file of all the back and forth communication with credit card companies, etc. (The bad guys, claiming to be us, were trying to get credit cards using addresses we’ve never lived at.)

    • Jean says:

      We knew we didn’t have any money coming, so we wanted it settled now.

      That’s too bad about the identity theft scare. You have our sympathy!

  4. tammyj says:

    GOOD GRIEF! … makes you wonder who’s minding the store!
    years and years ago i had a department store credit card. stupid? YES.
    although i paid if off each month. suddenly i started getting $20 checks from them.
    i did like you did… call. call. call. i talked to all kinds of depts. and managers.
    still… each month the check kept coming. each one told me of a “glitch.” they would fix it. just keep the check. i had been sending them back each month.
    they just kept coming. sometimes two in a month. i would call. get no where.
    finally i was totally disgusted. i just started depositing them into my account.
    in about a year of this … maybe a bit shorter… they suddenly sent me a nasty letter out of the blue demanding the full amount of what had been sent!
    did i scrape together the ridiculous amount? yes. did i cancel the card. i had long ago.
    did i ever set foot into another of their stores? no. the whole thing was ridiculous and
    WEIRD.

    • Jean says:

      The worst part of your story was the nasty letter at the end, but I’m not completely surprised. I would avoid those stores too!

  5. Cathy in NZ says:

    LOL

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