@sisyphuswins wrote:Not sure what to do here. Pardon the long post, but it's a little complicated, I'm not sure whether to get a lawyer involved and I live 8 hours from my mother, so any complications are just compounded by distance.
My mother is not in good health and has been showing intermittent signs of MS related dementia. Not enough to have her declared incompetent, but she forgets things and sometimes does things that make no sense. She also is seriously visually handicapped, but won't admit to it half the time. I am her attorney-in-fact and have been handling her finances for her for the last year.
So apparently, she signed up for a Medicare Part D supplement plan through United Healthcare in 2011, although she has had Rx insurance through Blue Cross all along. She also denies any memory of signing up for this supplementary plan. The tell me at United Healthcare, however, that she has called in, claimed her other insurance was cancelled, and all sorts of other crazy things. She has never used this Pard D supplement for her prescriptions, and has been paying for it until about the time she had a stroke.
I called them about a year ago, trying to straighten out why she was getting bills for insurance she has never used and claims she never signed up for. I figured she did it accidentally, since she can't see very well, and thought it would be easy to fix. That's when I found out she's had it since 2011. United Healthcare completed a "full investigation" and, despite the stroke, the intermittent dementia, never having used the plan, and the fact that I have a date and time I called in and was told by someone there that she could be retroactively disenrolled dating back to the beginning of 2014, the investigation shows that she does indeed owe them $935 in premiums and they've turned the account over to collections WHILE the investigation was in process.
I just got a letter in mail offering to settle in full for 50% of the debt. Should I just pay it so they go away, or is it worth it to get either an elder law or consumer protection lawyer in Virginia to fight this?
IMO I would just pay it if you believe she actually signed up for it, you are dealing with a medicare plan that is approved and backed by the US govt and as far as I know they can turn it over to the government and ask that it be deducted from any SS check she may be receiving. If you dont believe she actually did it then you may want to talk to a consumer attorney.
