I get to my Medtronic bill, I open it up, and there is a bill for over 900.00 looking me in the face like an angry thief in the night with a gun! Pay me now! It says as it is brandishing it's weapon. I look a bit closer and see, THIS BILL IS FROM SEPTEMBER OF 2011! I think to myself, I had insurance at that time... How could this bill be so high for supplies?!
I get out my investigation hat and decide that I am going to get to the bottom of this! I am too cheap to let close to one thousand dollars slip through my hands! I start with medtronic, I get a customer service rep that is very helpful. She tells me they submitted the bill to my insurance, but for some reason, they refused to pay for this one cycle of supplies. I get all the information I can from the Medtronic Rep because I know where this is going to end up, somewhere directly in my lap, with the burden of proof placed there for me to either prove or pay!
Armed with loads of data I call Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arkansas for a reason as to why they did not pay for that round of supplies. I was ready for battle! A BCBS Rep gets on the phone and asks me how she can be of assistance, I told her my story and she proceeded to get very deep into this investigation right along with me. I give her all of the information I have, dates, bill amounts, names of people I spoke with, everything I had. Then all of a sudden... BING! The problem gets identified by the BCBS Rep. She says "They submitted this bill multiple times for payment." We did pay this bill on this date. Just give Medtronic this reference number, and this claim number and it should clear things up. I also got her name, so Medtronic would also know who I was talking to.
So I call Medtronic back, very happy at this point because I had finally (with the assistance of BCBS) found out what had happened. I get another Rep on the phone and proceed to tell him the story of what I had been going though. His comment to me, "We have already submitted it multiple times for payment and they will not pay." My thoughts on this comment are simple, well duh! YOU ONLY GET ONE PAYMENT!
The Rep and I go round and round like we are in a boxing match. He hits me with a left, I block and throw and throw a counter punch. Then finally the knock out punch comes! He says to me in a rude way, their reference number is not even right, it is different from the one we have. So I say to him, "Now that is a good thing isn't it?" Now get on the phone with BCBS and look into THE NEW reference number and find out why you double billed me! He thanked me for my time and told me that if they did not pay, the burden of proof and payment would again fall back on me.
After I got off of the phone I thought to myself, what a great racket this must be for companies like this, just hold a bill or two for about a year, then drop it on an unsuspecting patient for payment. If they do not pay, cut of your supply of the goods and services you provide to him. They will pay soon if they can not do what I had the luck of doing while I was on the phone. I wonder if this happens much... Has anyone else every had an issue like this or is it just me... I placed the bill neatly in the WTF pile and wait for the next bill from Medtronic.
