Healthcare sliminess.

For some routine checkups that I have done yearly I had accidentally skipped a year and I started again this year like 3-4 months ago, but this time the billing seemed off, including a set of late bills that came in that insurance didn't chip in for that amounted to like $700.

So, I looked up the codes and it seemed right away like duplicate billing at least for the staff -- AMA guidelines say that you only bill out a second subordinate staffer like a nurse for their time if they spend a lot of time going over something different than the main subject of the appointment with the doctor, which was not the case at my appointment -- and my hunch was that the test was billed out twice, too, maybe from a different department.

And, I eventually got them to send me old copies of my bills from former appointments, too, only to find that at those 2 previous appointments there was 1 billing code for each thing, as opposed to the 2 per thing this time.

But, when I contacted the hospital, they were soooo slimy, pushing me to do stuff over the phone instead of email (no), saying that they never do fraudulent billing and that they did a "review" and the other bills were for like "facilities" (I think), later they said they did another review (again?) and the billing was for something like "different aspects of the same care" (you mean duplicate billing, I think?), and all the while they couldn't give me a straight answer for what the billing was actually for...  Just a scam, and I had to lay out for them twice that my options include contacting the insurer about potential health insurance fraud, as well as the state attorney general. I also had to tell them that it was astonishing that we had exchanged so many emails and they couldn't answer a simple question about what the bills were for, so the billing simply did not appear to be legitimate...  

The last I had heard they had said something about physically mailing me some result of some review, but when I responded to that email with a strongly worded email saying something like that their claims of "review" had appeared false so far and all the reasons that they had provided so far were generalities that made no sense and explained nothing and so the billing did not appear to be legitimate according to the evidence that I had provided, I got a notice in my email a few days later saying I had yet another message in my hospital messaging account from them. But, I didn't check it right away because I was busy and because this is all just so draining, and instead I decided that I'd look at it when something finally showed up in the mail (it didn't - I'm still waiting).

So, maybe they cancelled out the bills and never mailed me what they said they'd mail me, or maybe I misremembered what they said they'd do?

This is just such a timesuck, it's like they're trying to wear you down and make you accept the legitimacy of the billing and pay it to get rid of it instead of spending the time and energy and mental space fighting it.

Just such a scam, and so slimy.

It's finally on my to-do list to go open that message they sent me, and to see whatever they said.

I really hope that I don't have to write the state attorney general. 

I would also add that I don't remember companies doing stuff like this, years ago, but now I've run into billing and fraudulent stuff everywhere -- the hospital, an interstate bus service that I used, a rental car company...

It's like all of them are hostile rackets that are out to get you, instead of businesses operating in reasonably good faith that occasionally make mistakes sometimes, as happens in life.