The first collector comes calling

I got my first call from a collection agency today. They were quite polite. It turns out that the medical equipment people have been repeatedly mailing my bills into oblivion (I figured this out later, when I talked to them). When the insurance finally paid for her wheelchair and said the rest was non-covered they turned our account over.

The lady on the phone told me that her company was hired to collect on such-and-such dollar amount and asked what I intended to do about it. I told her that I would write a check for the portion of the amount that was unambiguously my responsibility, but that I still believed the rest to be the domain of the insurance company.

This is a bit inconvenient now. The collector is legally barred from working with the insurance company. The medical provider doesn't feel terribly compelled, since they've turned the account over to a collector. So I suppose that means I'll be writing a letter to the insurance people pointing out their error.

We've already had a sample of the insurance company's honesty, and the whole thing makes me feel tired. Still, evil people shouldn't prosper, so I'll keep after them. I've done a bit of checking about what things are usually covered (by Medicaid for example). That's very helpful because the definition of "medical necessity" effectively means what is usual and customary. I'm pretty sure they don't have good grounds for the refusal.

The medical equipment people (the collection agency gave me their number) were pretty nice, after I waited on hold FOR EVER. I must have 12 minutes of hold music on my tape recorder. I had finally given up and pressed '1' to leave a message when this woman answered. That's how I learned that they had totally the wrong address for us--not our current or old address or even a simple typo of either.

They seem to have terrible records. They had no copies of the letters they received from the insurance company, only some notes recorded in my (electronic?) file about what had been communicated between them and the insurance. Nothing that they could give me to help figure out what kind of mess is going on. I have to say, next to the hospital, they seem to be the least organized people I have worked with.

I'm not impressed. They did have a correct phone number on record for us, and I have had a working answering machine during the process. They could have left even one message and this would be a little less of a pain.