Ten years ago, when I started caregiving for my parents, I quickly discovered my mom was overpaying their medical bills. Mom (89) and dad (91) are from a generation that paid a bill as soon as you received it. You didn’t let it linger and *God forbid* you ever waited until you got a collection notice.
Luckily for them, my former career was in Human Resources where I spent time helping employees resolve insurance issues. I know with multiple insurance providers, you wait for them all to pay before you see what you owe. I also know that the bills from the providers during that waiting period can feel pretty threatening and intimidating to someone used to paying their bills on time. I have spent many a conversation telling my mom not to worry about a Second Notice bill from a provider.
Ten years ago, I was able to get $1,600 in overpayments refunded to my parents. Once I started, I was “on a mission.” It took a spreadsheet to keep track of the multiple providers, phone calls and follow up phone calls as I negotiated the byzantine world of insurance payments and refunds. I fully believe those overpayments would not have been refunded without my badgering.
Today it’s happened once again. My parents have Medicare and excellent secondary healthcare coverage, which normally pays 100% for doctors’ charges. I had a $35.27 ER visit bill for my dad from December. I paid it, thinking it was for medical transport. But we continued to get notices that it was still owed - including the dreaded “collection notice”. I called this morning, determined to rake the billing office over the coals for not crediting the paid amount to his account. I was temporarily silenced when the customer service woman told me the $35.27 I had paid was for a bill my mom incurred during an ER visit in October. Welllll…that shut me up! Maybe I DID owe the $35.27 on my dad and was being a bill-paying slacker! So I immediately slunk off the call feeling like my righteous anger was undeserved.
Then I called my dad’s secondary insurance carrier to see why they weren’t paying his $35.27 bill. Lo and behold, it turns out it will be paid by the State of Illinois. Like many states right now, they’re dragging their feet paying bills. The insurance rep said the doctor’s service will receive 9% interest for waiting, which sounds pretty good to me. I immediately asked the secondary insurance provider about the $35.27 I had already paid on my mom’s account. Guess what… the State is very close to paying that too.
Now my question as a caregiver is, don’t you think the doc’s billing service that operates in the State of Illinois understands this? If not, why not? It’s their stock-in-trade. It’s what they do all day long. Deal with insurance. Why do I have to track this down and figure it out? A cynic might believe that the billing service is simply trying to get clients to pay the bill, knowing full well they’ll also be reimbursed by the state. They get the patient’s money, then get the state’s money with the added interest. It’s a sweet little overpayment deal if it works. And I’m sure a lot of the time it works. Particularly with the most vulnerable senior citizens and/or their overworked caregivers - the people who can afford it the least.
How many other senior citizens or their caregivers simply pay the $35.27 for fear it will be sent to collection and ruin their credit? Why isn’t anyone talking about these kinds of overpayments? Does anyone ever audit medical providers for these types of overpayments and their refund to consumers? I have never seen any mention of how much money is overpaid to medical providers and then refunded or not refunded. While $35.27 isn’t much, multiplied over and over again, it becomes a nice little side income.
I may wait to see if they refund that $35.27 to my parents. Will they refund it without my intervention and badgering? With my previous overpayment experience, I’m cynical enough to doubt it. What do you think?