I used my hsa to pay the balance of about $800
9 months later, instead of refilling with the correct insurance company, they sent us a $20k bill.
After we called them and said, hey you know you should probably refill with the right company, they did. The insurance company declined because they took to long to refile.
The hospital never bothered to follow up and explain the situation until we called the insurance company ourselves and had them restart the process.
In the meantime our secondary insurance approved the part of the bill that was for my son, rather than my wife. The hospital sent me a new bill for $200 for their deductible.
From here, there was an extended game of back and forth where they'd send me a bill and I'd call and ask if they figured out the rest of the insurance and what happened to the HSA check we sent them. This went on for 13 months.
My son is now walking and this week they finally sent us to collections.
I called and threatened to take them to court, and finally talked to a supervisor who admitted that they owed us $600.
But what about collections?
Sir, that was a different bill.
Why can't you take the money that you owe me and pay the bill that you just sent me to collections for?
Well you didn't ask us to do that. I'll go ahead and do that now.
I resisted throwing my phone through a wall just barely.
"[…] there's adverse selection. The hospitals that make errors in the client's favor or that don't make errors at all are more likely to go out of business than the ones that make errors in their own favor. So guess which ones are still around when you need a hospital. In other words, just because the errors are accidental, it doesn't mean they happen at random. (This argument applies to any shady business practice that "looks" like an accident, for example dark patterns on websites, or having great customer service for taking your money but terrible customer service for refunding it.)"
This is an amusing pastime if you can afford temporary depressions in your credit score.
They're actually good at it, and it were a startup extracting those profits they would be applauded for it.
The hospital industry claims non payments total around 6% of hospital expenses.
http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20120106/BLOGS01/301...
I do wonder if they calculate that 6% on what they bill though, rather than on what things actually cost. The margin on an unpaid bill isn't really a cost.