A time to whine
Waiting in the mail yesterday when we got back from our week at the cottage was a note from a bill collector--along with the threats of doom if the "bill" is not paid.
The "bill" has been languishing since late fall. I have no idea if it is even a justified charge, but that is not mine to determine, that is up to Medicare.
This "bill" has a long legacy. My wife is a professional in working through these things after years of having to deal with insurance companies--and even she has found no success in trying to coach the generators of this wayward "bill" into proper procedures.
My problem with this goes even deeper. We don't know who the supposed provider was or what services they might have provided. Despite my fond feelings for our regional hospital and the overall exceptional care I got there I do not like the circling "vultures" adorned with white lab coats, a stethoscope, and thick accents who prowl the halls looking for someone they might just drop in on---get their name and room number and move on, only to generate a bill for doing nothing. Our local big hospital where my heart procedure was done is infested with the same species.
In this case the billing was done by a nest of parasites in CA who are even more lacking in professionalism than are their clients. My wife has talked to them on multiple occasions and explained to them what they are doing wrong, and how to correct it. They suffer from the same limited verbal skills as the white vultures and the circling continues.
Tomorrow my wife will call the hospital and speak to the wonderful ladies in their customer care department and enlist their aid in trying to sort this out---without her aid I would be hard pressed to think I could ever unravel this. I have to wonder how many lesser equipped people fall victim to these billing practices that ultimately rely on intimidation to get payment.
BTW---this bill has never been submitted to Medicare--that might not be a simple mistake!
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty” ---Sir Winston Churchill
"Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all." ---John W. Gardner
“You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” ---C. S. Lewis
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Originally Posted by Independent Voter
