Subject to Change

Lots of people read my post about the hospital bill for Cole’s birth, thanks to Jay Weber and bloggers like Owen, Fred, and Steve. Jay shared my story in the second hour of his show this morning.

After talking with Jay on the air I called my insurance company. They confirmed that they did pay this bill a year ago. There was an appeal, after which the amount I owed was indeed $250. I still need to convince the hospital, of course. I have not contacted anyone there yet, because I’ve requested paperwork from the insurance company to back me up. I actually like my insurance company. Most of the time they’re on the ball and are quite fair.

Jay may have overestimated me a bit, when he said that he assumed I was going to pay. I’m willing to let the hospital make a case, sure. Now that the amount is what I expected, I may even listen without laughing. Ultimately, I’ll try to pay what I owe. But, they’ve really got to sell me on why they feel it’s right to bill a customer more than a year late.

I have a feeling that RoseIndigo was right, when she said there’s a statute of limitations. I also suspect that the hospital may have violated its own billing policies, because this represents very poor customer service. One other tid-bit someone shared with me today, that I still need to verify, is that medical expenses may be prevented from attacking your credit. It’s not like I was worried that my credit score could go any lower, but that gives me a nice incentive to pay all my other bills first.

To the question of whether I was watching for the bill and why we didn’t act sooner: I resolved to wait about six months before worrying. I’d already been told that this could take a while. Kelly and I noted at various times that we hadn’t seen anything and wondered if we should call. With an infant at home it’s easy to loose track, and we did. This bill probably showed up when it did because I’d forgotten about worrying. The ultimate insult is that the largest line item on the bill is for the room. It’s over $11,000! We paid an awful lot to have people service us. Why is it my job to even bother chasing after them? Don’t they hire people to pay attention to billing and do nothing else all day long? My job title doesn’t include babysitter (except at home) and I’m not moonlighting as a manager of the hospital’s billing department. These are the people we trusted with the birth of our child, for crying out loud!

Thanks to everyone who shared their stories and ideas. I’ll continue updating as things happen, because I think we can all stand to learn something from this!