Should I pay extortion

[Anonymous]

My FICO scores are 770 -790 and I've never had a late or missed payment in 50 years.  A medical group is breaching their PPO contract and insisting I pay the Blue Cross discount (Balance Billing).  Blue Cross is moving very slowly on my request to enforce their PPO contract. They are threatening to damage my credit score if I don't pay the $125 I don't owe. Five letters and many phone calls to resolve this have gone unanswered.  My question is.....it doesn't seem cost-effective to hire an attorney to save $125, so how much damage could they do to my score?  As distasteful as it would be, would I be better off just swallowing my pride and paying them $125 and finding another doctor?  Thanks.

[MattH]

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@Anonymous wrote:

My FICO scores are 770 -790 and I've never had a late or missed payment in 50 years.  A medical group is breaching their PPO contract and insisting I pay the Blue Cross discount (Balance Billing).  Blue Cross is moving very slowly on my request to enforce their PPO contract. They are threatening to damage my credit score if I don't pay the $125 I don't owe. Five letters and many phone calls to resolve this have gone unanswered.  My question is.....it doesn't seem cost-effective to hire an attorney to save $125, so how much damage could they do to my score?  As distasteful as it would be, would I be better off just swallowing my pride and paying them $125 and finding another doctor?  Thanks.

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I would start by poking around the websites of (1) your insurance company and (2) your State government, looking for verbatim quotes from the official rules that you can recite to people at the medical group.  The rules about cases like this vary from State to State, but some States do have fairly strict laws intended to force medical providers to fight directly with the insurance carrier for payment before attempting to collect from the patient.

Unfortunately, if you cannot resolve this fairly quickly without a lawyer then your options are limited because as you note the amount is too small for it to be worth hiring an attorney.

[haulingthescoreup]

I would also start reading the HIPAA/ Medical Collections thread now, so that you know how to document all this.

It's over on the new Medical Collections board:

Medical Collections and the HIPAA letter process

[Anonymous]

For $125 and with FICO high 700's, PAY THE BILL.  Then go after a refund through your PPO and the medical provider.  You have all the leverage then.  Right now, they do....right or wrong.

Getting a late or collection would drop your score under 700 most likely and the work to fix that will be more than the work to get a refund.  I had an erroneous $31 collection hit EQ and my score went from 806 to 689.  Took 3 months and much headache to get it removed.  The consellation prize:  I ended up with a $5000 settlement from the CA on this one....so at least I got paid for my time.

Trust me when I say, $125 is cheap compared to the headaches you will go through to fix it.....Had I known about the $31 collection before it hit my CR, I would have paid it even if I knew in the end I would get a $5k settlement.  It wasn't worth it.

Think of the $125 as "return of premium insurance."  You will eventually get your $125 back, but you are insured against FICO and CR derogs in the meantime.

Message Edited by txjohn on 04-19-2009 03:14 PM