This stuff doesn’t even surprise me anymore, but it’s still funny in a way. So for two months, I’ve been getting bills from McLaren Greater Lansing to pay an $80 copay on a lab test that hasn’t been performed.
I tried calling my doctor (who ordered the test at my last physical) and said, “I won’t be able to get to the lab, please cancel the order,” but was told by the receptionist they couldn’t cancel the order. So I called the billing department and basically said, “hey, look at my chart! This test wasn’t done, it’s not in-progress, I have a ton of shit to do and it’s not happening. If you don’t reverse this charge to my insurance company and zero the bill, I’ll have to report it as medical fraud.” I was assured this charge would be reviewed.
A month later I still see it as pending and my insurance company has made their portion of the payment so I call Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and explain that McLaren was incorrectly paid for a service and that charge should be reversed. The young sounding person in the call center somehow didn’t seem to understand what I meant even when I said, “It’s medical fraud! Your company paid for a service that was never given! If it was my money, I’d be pretty pissed off!” And after being assured that Blue-Cross would look into it, that was as much of the conversation as my frustration tolerance could bare.
So we just got a lump of mail from last week and here’s another McLaren bill. Looks like after reviewing it they didn’t remove it from my account; instead they discounted it to $24.
Smack my damned head!
I think the worst part is: I skipped having this test done because I don’t have the PTO and time to skip work during business hours to go and deal with this stuff anymore, but now with the amount of phone calls I’ve had to make to deal with this, I’ll have spent more time away from work than if I’d just had the test done. Super frustrating that it takes this much effort to tell people what they should already know!