This is why I hate paying the bills

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So I sit down to pay the bills. I slit open all the envelopes, throw away half of the stuff because it’s junk, separate the bills and action items from the junk included with them, and prepare to get down to actually paying some stuff.

Only I see I’ve got a second bill from our doctor for a claim that was refused for our new baby. We’ve sent in the information to HR/insurance company, but when I call my husband to ask him to check on it, he tells me they have it set up so you basically send an e-mail into a black hole, and have to wait up to 45 days to get a response. No telephone numbers, no people’s names, only an e-mail address which generates automatic responses acknowledging receipt of your inquiry.

So I call the doctor’s billing service, and spend about 20 minutes on and off hold while they look things up and (very nicely) resubmit it, so that it will (hopefully) coincide with Husband’s company putting our kid on the insurance.

Next item: our car insurance renewal packet . . . with only one insurance card. I look further and see our other car is not listed on the policy at all. So I call. And find out that despite the fact that we added the car, and they sent us a card last go-round, they somehow deleted the second car from the policy after that, and I’ve been driving around without insurance for almost a year. Well, not really - they said they’d have covered any losses, but still. So got that cleared up.

So I pick up the next bill and it’s from the Birth Center, and it’s for a bunch of services that were also listed on the last bill, which I paid already. So I call, get put on hold while they look stuff up, etc. Then find out that some services were denied coverage, where the billing person thinks there should have been coverage. So she researches that while I wait, and eventually promises to resubmit it and get back to me.

Next item is a letter from our prescription insurance saying I’m almost out of covered local pharmacy refills, and I need to print out a packet of information, fax it to my provider, and have them fax a new prescription for a generic alternative, in a different amount, directly to them so I can mail-order the prescription. So I take care of that (thank goodness we have a fax machine at the house).

So then I paid the bills.

And today, I got the mail, only to find a letter from Husband’s company, laced with “regrettably” and “unfortunately” that says they won’t cover our daughter because while we a.) logged into the system and added her as a dependent; and b.) logged back in and added her social security number when we got it, they have no record of us also calling and telling them to enroll her in the insurance, so by their Byzantine rules, nanny nanny boo boo, they don’t have to enroll her until next year. (When, no doubt, we will have to log in twice, call them, send a registered letter, and sacrifice an unblemished calf during the new moon, in order to get her added.) There’s an appeals process. Where you send a letter to a black-hole address without any names or telephone numbers attached to it.

Time spent actually paying bills: about 10 minutes.
Time spent dealing with bureaucratic bullshit: hours

2

Bureaucracy sucks.

And on top of all the bureaucracy, you have to deal with the advertisements for crap enclosed in your bills, too?!? :smack:

3

Put all the junk stuff in the envelope you mail back to them.

4

It won’t affect the company, it’ll just make life difficult for the poor wretch that opens the envelopes.

5

I work in rental property management. The day you have to handle 57 mortgage payments, 49 water bills, and 133 electric bills, then you can come complaining to me.

6

Sounds to me like ‘paying bills’ isn’t the problem here. Seems to be insurance companies causing all stress.

7

I pay everything by online bill-pay, so I don’t send them anything. But I appreciate the spirit in which this is offered.

Annie-Xmas, I assume you get paid to handle all that, right? And you don’t have to try to squeeze it in during the brief and unpredictable nap times of a 6 month old?

When I was a lawyer, I worked as guardian for several old ladies with dementia, and administered decedents’ estates as well. It was tons of paperwork, mail sorting, filing, form filling, bill paying, and account balancing. It never stressed me out. For some reason, only doing this type of thing for myself stresses me out.

And yeah, the insurance companies are killing me this week. Though the biggest ball buster is actually DH’s company’s employee benefits department, not the actual insurance company. I could seriously strangle someone over there. Which is probably why they never give you access to a real human being - they’re too ashamed and scared because they know they’re doing their damnedest to screw over their employees (and their children!).

8

When my daughter was born in 1992, she had to remain in the hospital an extra 3 days because she was jaundiced. Imagine my surprise when the insurance company tried to deny the claim, saying that we failed to call and get a pre-authorization for the extension and were therefore expected to pony up the $9k in expenses.

I called and asked exactly what rule I had violated. She pointed to the rule that said prior to any admission I was to call and get pre-authorization. I explained that I’d called when I was in labor, as I was instructed to do. I also called them after my daughter was born. The lady said I should have called again when I discovered that she wouldn’t be released. I asked where it said that in my benefits booklet. She cited the pre-authorization prior to admission policy. I explained that it WASN’T an admission as she was already IN the hospital; she was never RELEASED. I called them the day she was born to report her birth, as I was instructed to do, and I expected them to honor their part and pay her expenses.

She then tried to tell me that an infant is allowed to stay in the hospital for 48 hours. Any stay beyond that had to be pre-authorized. I asked her to point out where in my benefits booklet it said that. She told me that the 48 hour rule was “industry standard.” I explained that I was a lay person and had no way of knowing what the “industry standard” was. Then I asked her once again to cite which rule in my benefit booklet I violated. She kept citing the pre-authorization rule and I kept insisting that an ADMISSION is not the same thing as an EXTENSION. Finally, she decided that she’d do us a COURTESY and pay the bill.

**

The second time the same company tried to deny a huge claim was when I did an at-home pregnancy test and discovered I was pregnant for a second time. So I did a really stupid, ridiculous thing and called my ob/gyn.

A few weeks later I got a letter from the insurance company saying that not only would they not cover the exam my ob/gyn had conducted, but that they wouldn’t cover ANY expenses related to my pregnancy because I had not gotten a referral from my primary care physician as was clearly explained in my benefits package.

Sure enough, pregnancy was one of those conditions that required a referral. And since I failed to clear that hurdle, they weren’t going to pay for ANY expenses related to the pregnancy and delivery.

I didn’t even bother to argue. Instead I hung up the phone and called the HR department of my husband’s company. The HR lady was aghast and said that she’d take care of it. A few days later, I got a note from the insurance company reversing their decision. We also got a letter from the HR department explaining that pregnancy was no longer considered a condition that required a referral from a PCP.

:smiley:

9

That sort of BS is why I’m glad that (IIRC it’s due to) Illinois state law that requires that HMOs allow women a PCP and a OB/GYN who’s considered a PCP for gynecological/obstetric-related conditions.