So, when I said I was debt-free, I didn't realize that I would still be fighting with my insurance company about a $1100 lab work bill from December.
After Mom passed away due to blood clots, I took myself off of birth control pills (which can cause blood clots and should not be used by people with a family history of clots) and made an appointment with my doctor. Since the hospital was not able to tell us the exact reason for Mom's clots, my doctor ordered an extensive round of testing to check for most known clotting factors. This is important because if I have any of the known clotting factors it could affect anything from having dental work to having a baby and just about everything in between.
So the lab pulls fifteen vials of blood and runs a gazillion tests. All come back clean except one, so I have that one re-done and that comes back clean as well. Yea! No known clotting factors.
My insurance company had no qualms about paying the $100 re-test lab fee. However, they don't seem to think that it was "medically necessary" for me to know if I had any of the many other clotting factors and denied payment for the round of a gazillion tests. Even after my doctor has sent in several letters explaining to them how it would affect just about every medical decision from now until I die. Even after explaining to them that my mother died unexpectedly due to blood clots (hence the term "family history"). Now, I've been a pretty healthy person, and had been paying for this insurance for about 3 years and rarely used anything more than the standard preventative office visits. And they're squabbling with me over $1100.
Thankfully the lab has been very understanding and, even though they keep sending me reminders, are not sending the bill to collections yet. But really, who are these insurance review people that get to decide arbitrarily what is medically necessary? If my doctor, who I trust with my life, deems it necessary, who are they to argue? At this point, it's a matter of principal that I will not pay this bill: I paid for insurance to cover things like this.
2 comments:
Unfortunately, most insurance companies think the bottom line is the bottom line. Doubtless you know they have people who sit around all day long and decide whether procedures are necessary and thus whether they'll pay for it, but I'm convinced they mostly don't give a damn about the necessity. All they care about is the cost. Next stop, small claims court.
Thank goodness for for free enterprise, right? It's done such wonderful things for the US health care system. And to think, here in Canada where we have that evil socialized medicine, we've paid zero dollars for numerous non-medically-necessary doctor's visits and blood tests. Did I mention we're not even citizens? And our neighbors? Delivered their new baby in a 4-star birthing center for, you guessed it, zero dollars. You'd better hope the US doesn't decide to nationalize health care!
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