I will gladly pay you tomorrow........

For four years I have ambled through the labyrinth of medical billing. Occasionally, I would hit a dead end and have to retrace my steps. Mostly though, I just plodded ahead paying when I needed to pay-satisfying the various invoices that I met along the way. Several significant accounts became delinquent recently when we discovered that our secondary insurance had been improperly billed and they had begun taking money back from providers. While we knew that this was going to get resolved in due time it was going to take a great deal of patience and persistence. It seems I am somewhat better endowed in that latter than the former.

Tonight, after supper, Christi asked me to sit with her at the kitchen table while she made twirly cats for my friends at work. As it turned out I had a mindless task to complete for work, so, we were peacefully sitting at the table when the phone rang. I answered only to discover that the caller who dared to disturb my quiet time with my daughter was a collection agency! The same agency that I called two months ago to say "There has been a billing error, sorry we didn't catch it, here is the correct information". The same collection agency that called last week to which I responded "The insurance company has paid that claim please check your system for payment". The same agency who was now telling me that it was not their job to prove that I owed something but that it was my job to prove that I didn't owe! ahhhhhhhhh!!!!!! Well Christi has no idea that there is any financial ramification to her treatment. It has never dawned on her and hopefully never will that medicine costs money. Consequently, I did not want her to hear this increasing heated conversation. So I stepped outside to explain my logic to the fella. "I can't pay something that I no longer owe" To which he just kept saying "prove to me that you have satisfied this obligation". Desperately and more loudly I asked him "to please check his file". "That is not my job and we will keep calling until you prove that you don't owe this anymore" was his only reply.

Does anyone remember the lyrics to the song Coward of the County? "Twenty years of crawling was bottled up inside him..." Well four years of patiently dealing with the frustrations associated with medical billing had finally overwhelmed me and I let this guy have it in loud vulgar terms. I told him to go violate himself several times then hung up. My first thought was-I wish I knew more languages so I could have told him that several times in different languages...my second thought was that the whole neighborhood heard me. (sorry)

As I slumped back into the house a very nervous Christi asked me who had called. I said that it was kind of a funny story and she wouldn't really understand. She responded that she heard it all and didn't think that it sounded funny at all....

Shayne