I'm starting to wonder if any medical provider (in the US) is capable of billing their clients correctly. I'm about 0 for 15 for the last 5 years. Every single bill has required extensive arguments over the phone to correct. Issues range from being billed by doctors I've never met to being billed for money that's actually already been paid by my insurance. In one case, the argument dragged on for three years, involved a collections agency, permanently affected my credit, and ended with the doctor finally admitting I'd overpaid for the services rendered, years before. I've even ended up paying once for a doctor I'd never met just to get them to STFU, since it was just $90.

Now the hospital my wife recently spawned a process in is continuing to send us more and more bills, despite me having a signed form from the billing department stating that I'd paid up-front for all services including those I'm being billed for now (I thought I'd resolved this over the phone, but another copy of the bill just arrived). And her attending doctor was not satisfied with the "everything included" $3,000 or so we paid for her visits and delivery, and is now sending us additional bills.

I'm moving to freaking Canada. Or, like, Antarctica.

Well, welcome to the frozen chosen! You'll enjoy it up here. Just don't mind the taxes.

I know how you feel. I had to go through similar things to tell a long distance telephone provider to screw off. They continued to bill us for long distance service despite the fact we cancelled the land line months before. Eventually I took it to the Better Business Bureau, and it was resolved in a matter of days. Does the US have something similar?

Be glad you've only had a 3 year waiting period before something's gotten corrected. I'm currently arguing one that's been going on since about 2005. I had an emergency room visit which ended up fairly expensive (over $15000) during a transition between jobs, but for which I had COBRA. It was about 2 years before the insurance company even admitted that maybe it had some responsibility to pay, and about a couple years later, they came back once again denying any responsibility.

I'll admit I get about 40% correct bills, and honestly, in the end, I end up just paying most bills, even if insurance is suppose to pay for it. Unless the bill is fairly expensive, I just consider time more valuable than money.

Service corporations have entered an unprecedented state of piracy. There seems to be a new trend where they just simply move their customer service department to their marketing department. Solving client issues with their service has suddenly become a matter of selling the client another (usually more expensive) product. This new method seems to rely on the fact that most people will choose to pay more to solve the issue than to take the case to the court.

I recently bought a cheap cellular cellphone plan and I was unable to use it like for 3 months. I called the customer service a quatrillon times and all I got was endless lies from some foreing telemarketer. I finally took the case to the government customer defense office and after another 3 months, I got the phone working properly. This company (Telmex - Claro Argentina) is an international one. It's supposed to provide at least "a service". They just don't. They pee on their own clients while laughing at them. Their slogan is "We don't give a fuck about you. Give us your money you scam-bag!".

It is very specific to the place.

I've also only seen it at medical places that outsource their billing to large companies that do nothing but collect money.


I had one doctor (a dentist office) that had billing mistakes. The first mistake I talked with the doctor directly (not his billing outsource people) and got it resolved. He said it had been happening to a few clients and he'd work with them to fix it. When it happened a second time I talked to the doctor directly, and explained why we would not be seeing him again. He was was sad to see my family go but understood.

I had another instance where an item was double-billed by Praxair, but it was quickly resolved.

I also had a problem at a distant hospital where we had some emergency care. Different groups within the hospital had mis-communications that ended up triple-billing two items, double-billing several items, and mis-billing several others. It took several letters and phone calls, but was resolved.


Otherwise I've had great luck with billing. Most of my family's physicians (dentists, optometrist, etc.) handle their own billing directly. My primary care doctor and most of the clinical work takes place within the Intermountain Healthcare network, which is the local non-profit medical network that is highly ranked for just about every aspect of their services.

Billing is really complicated for large hospitals, and is often automated. It gets even worse when they have outside contractors for certain services, which they often do, or doctors who float between different hospitals (they work like outside contracters then, but not the same as them). It's unfortunately often not a help for the billing department to have things billed upfront, not because it's harder (it isn't), but because it's kind of rare. People don't really know what to do with it.

If you have a signed letter from the billing department, you should have that person check to make sure that the bills aren't statements printed before you paid or after you've paid but before the payment was processed (it's optimistic, but sometimes it'll work). That person should also be able to explain what any other issue is, and even advocate for you to whoever's printing the statements.

If all else fails, there are specialists who deal with improper medical bills for a living, and they will have more impact with the hospital than you will yourself.

I've never been sent a medical bill .
A lot of services here are "bulk-billing", which means that instead of billing their clients, the doctors send the bills to the government, and the government pays them 75% of the money. They lose 25%, but don't have the hassles of dealing with cash or dealing with debt collection.
The ones that aren't bulk-billing have only ever cost me between $50 (checkup) to $200 (bloodwork and scans).

I'm currently arguing one that's been going on since about 2005. I had an emergency room visit which ended up fairly expensive (over $15000) during a transition between jobs, but for which I had COBRA. It was about 2 years before the insurance company even admitted that maybe it had some responsibility to pay, and about a couple years later, they came back once again denying any responsibility.

That's freakin' scary!