jvo, I just went through a similar experience, with the same CA (Mitchell Bluhm/Capio). This is a practice called balance-billing, and it's illegal. If Medicaid (or in my case the VA) paid any part of the bill and the caregiver accepted it, that payment is presumed to be payment in full, regardless of amount. They are prohibited by federal statute from billing you for anything more.
Here's a good thought. Since it's 6 years old, it's probably past the statute of limitations. Don't know about Florida so you'll want to check to be sure, but given its age, you probably don't have to worry about being sued while you work to get it removed.
The first thing you'll need to do is send a debt validation request to the credit reporting agencies where it's showing up. (In our case they reported to TU and EX, no EQ.) They have 30 days for that. When it comes back, if it's done properly, you'll know if Medicaid did make a payment that was accepted. If nothing was ever paid, you should pursue this with Medicaid (can't help with that; sorry). But if they did pay any part of it, then here's what we did. We didn't have to do the debt validation stage because we had documents from the VA, the original provider, and the collector. So, we just disputed it directly. We wrote a dispute letter (sent certified) to the CRAs, with copies of everything, told them the collection was illegal, and cited the appropriate statute. You'll have to Google to get the right statute from the federal code.
It took the full 30 days but both TU and EX removed the collections from my husband's reports. TU came back at first and said it was a paid collection updated to 0. That was not acceptable, but before we could take another step, they removed it completely. EX just removed it. We never had to contact Bluhm/Capio directly.
So... take a deep breath. May take some time, but it's most likely fixable. Hope this helps.
