"Your credit will be affected"

Mary had some teeth pulled back in October. At the time, we forked over $100 to the dentist office to cover copays and deductibles. (Well, I wasn't there. They pressured Tara into paying it, but I was expecting the teeth to be $75 each after insurance, so I figured it was ok. The teeth ended up being $13 a tooth for the extractions...)

The dental office did something screwy with the billing. They billed the office visit and one of the tooth extractions separate from the other 3 extractions. After they submitted those 2 claims, they submitted everything together another time. This confused the insurance company. The 3 extractions were paid for, the other 2 claims were both rejected. (This was Christmas Eve when they rejected the 2 claims.)

In February, I figured out that the claims had been rejected and they were billing us for something like $200 worth of stuff. I called the dentist office and asked them what was going on, they were going to contact the insurance company. At least that's what they said they were going to do, what they actually did was resubmit the claims, including all 4 teeth that were pulled, even though 3 of them had been paid for. The insurance company dutifully rejected everything as duplicates.

2 weeks ago, I called the insurance company to explain what was going on. They seemed to figure out what was going on and were going to resubmit the claims for processing. I called the dentists office to explain this to them, it looks like their response was to first resubmit the entire claim (including all 4 extraction) to the insurance company, then turn around and send us another bill.

The bill this time has a big orange "FINAL NOTICE!" sticker, along with the following note: "Unless your balance of $199.82 is paid in full by 4/28/08, then it will be sent to Mountain Land Collections. Your credit will be affected." Isn't that nice of them? I guess that's what I get for calling them to explain that the insurance was working on paying them. Before I had called them, I worked out what we had paid them and what we were going to owe. It turns out that the dentists office was going to owe me $10.

So imagine my surprise when in the mail today came this bill with the collections notice on it. I called the insurance company to talk to them about this craziness, they finally figures out the one line item that hadn't been paid and sent it back out to be processed.

When I talked to the dentists office, they didn't want to take responsibility for the mess. I'm not sure why they thought submitting 5 different claims for the same work would make a difference, but the initial 3 sets of claims all at the same time really messed everything up. Our current balance is something like $58. My $10 they owed me is down to $4, because they have tacked on a couple of "finance charges". I could just go down to their office and pay the $58 to avoid any further 'finance charges', but then I would have to try to get all my money back out of them once the insurance claims finishes processing. The way things have been going, I would have gone back in and asked for my money, and they would have sent me a check in the mail, but it would get messed up and I would get 3 checks for the money instead of just 1, and we would have to go all through this crap again.

The lady on the phone said that as long as the thing gets paid by the end of the month, we would be fine and it wouldn't go to collections. This kind of ticked me off and made me slightly hostile. I asked them if they wanted to take any kind of responsibility for this, since they were the ones that double billed the thing in the first place. She indicated that they have had problems recently getting the insurance to pay out on extractions, she didn't know why, but that's what has been happening. I ended the conversation with something about how if we choose to ever go back there, I would be sure to follow up with the billing people so they submit one and only one claim, it gets paid, and we don't have to go through this again. She stuck to her story about the insurance company being the trouble makers.

So, middle of next week I will be in their office demanding my $4. I should ask for all $10. What I really would like to do it bill them for my time the past couple of weeks I spent on the phone with the insurance company trying to explain that Mary had 4 teeth pulled, and which parts of the claim had been paid and how the mess started in the first place. I figure I'm good for $75 an hour at least. Maybe I should bill them for $160, and start sending them harassing letters.

I guess the biggest problem is that this is the 4th dentist we've tried to take the girls to, and the girls actually like this guy. I guess if we go back I will just have to watch the billing process like a hawk...