The breach came from American Medical Collection Agency, a debt collector that Quest uses. It's a sad statement on the state of American healthcare that 11.9 million people can't afford to pay their lab bills.
That we have so much fallibility in medical billing is still a sad statement, though.
https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/collections
https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r... (excellent resource by patio11 on how to present to CRAs and build a paper trail, although more focused on responding to identify theft)
https://web.archive.org/web/20190604005100/https://www.balla... (Sample letters to respond to debt collectors)
Disclaimer: Not an attorney, not your attorney.
Medical payments in the US are a joke and laughable. I have a chronic illness, so I gained some experience dealing with those snakes.
Ex 1. I was charged 20k for pre-authorized procedure. After procedure insurance could not agree with the company on the payment, as average payment for such procedure is $1800(according to insurance) and insurance refused to pay. I stressed over it but didn't pay it, I was young and didnt have 20k laying around. I told the company to get lost and invited them to send my account to collections and that I will fight them in court if I had to. 7 years later I received a bill after they agreed with insurance on discounted rate for $300, at that point they started calling me again. It was too late and they could not put it on my credit report, therefore, again I explained that I will not pay as this barely covers time lost dealing with it. Bills stopped coming and they accepted defeat.
Ex.2 Mother was in ER, 40 minutes for abdomen pain. 0 tests, doctor pressed her stomach and gave her high strength Tylenol. Bill total $3500, just absurd IMO. Parents are lower middle class, I sent a letter with their income, debt and some nice words. Took me about 2 hours tops to come up with it and find where to drop it off. Bill instantly reduced to $350.
Healthcare prices in the US cannot be taken seriously. It is so anti-patient it is unbelievable. Go to ER and get 10 different bills. There is definitely room for a company to come in and represent patients and easily save money.
Plus, patients are OFTEN billed for stuff they didn't not get. The abuse in the industry is insane. You can get double billed, there is also upcoding and unbundling, which results in higher bills.
I did this to a debt collection agency and they became enraged, presumably trying to scare me into allowing them to cut corners. Sure enough I never did get the validation and the collection vanished from my credit report.
Reason #283942 that our medical system is horrendously broken in the US.
You get low-hundreds (not an exaggeration) different documents, handed to you and via mail over the course of a year (9ish months + a few after, ends up close to a year), some of which are bills and some of which look like bills but say "this is not a bill" (so... why'd you send it?) and some of which are from your insurance referencing other things and blah blah blah, then you get a few that are clearly a screwup and you call the provider and they're all "LOL no your insurance got it it's fine, ignore that bill" (!?!?! seriously, dafuq, how many people just pay it and do you give them their money back unless they ask?) and of course one of those pieces of paper is gonna slip through the cracks.
Insurances companies get a lot of shit, but the whole medical billing complex is rotten, top to bottom.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1022079/000094787119...