They Were Entitled to Free Care. Hospitals Hounded Them to Pay

I was receiving care from a couple of doctors who worked in the adult outpatient care branch of a large hospital. I was fortunate, and insurance covered my care from them in full, without any sort of haggling or harassment on my part.

On many occasions, I received collections notices for bills from the hospital that I had not received prior, for IDs which, when I called the hospital's billing department, they said "those are paid in full, you shouldn't be hearing about them" - "...and yet I'm on the phone with you about a debt collector you sold it to, now aren't I?" "...well, we can't do anything about it."

Fortunately, the debt collector, of all people, made it straightforward to resolve each time this happened - once I reached out, they went through each bill and went "yeah this seems like it's paid in full", "yeah this seems like it's paid in full", "okay no this looks like it's the leftover from a copay", and then I followed up with more documentation from my insurance, and it went away.

But it kept happening. It was one of, though by far not the largest, reason I stopped getting care there - having to spend hours doing back and forth on the phone over bills that were nominally paid on time every couple months was quite draining...