I don't expect much from a CA, but from a doctor?

[Anonymous]

Oh I'm mad.

DH and I got served by a CA for a medical bill that should have been sent to L&I back in May.

I ran around forever trying to get paperwork sent to L&I, finally got it all to the right people, and then L&I takes their time processing the bills. Which is normal, that's fine.

They make their decision on July 7th, and submit "Payment" to two doctors. Both bills are denied payment but clearly state "Patient is not responsible for this charge" - and in case anyone doesn't know L&I is state run, it's not a private company, it's the government.

Doctor 1 removes the collection less than 1 week later (they were not sueing us, I just happened to find it on DH's report and realized it should have gone to L&I)

Doctor 2, or CA I should say, stays on for over a week. So I call them and say, I want to get this dismissed, but they tell me they'll dismiss it when the doctor contacts them and tells them they've been paid. So I wait some more and more. Still the doctor says they haven't heard back from L&I.

Finally today, I call CA again to see if anything has changed. Nothing has changed.

So I get on the L&I website and send them a message asking what I can do to help this process along, because the doc is saying they haven't heard back. Three hours later the CA calls me up and says that L&I denied the bills so they could either arrange a court date, or we could arrange payment plans...

what?!

I made it clear on multiple occassions that I could provide paperwork documenting L&I's decision that the patient was not responsible for the charges. There is no doubt the doctor knew we were not responsible, L&I would have told them that. So they thought we'd do nothing and just pay? I faxed over the paper work to the CA, they'll review the papers and be in touch with me again.

I'll just be so glad when this whole thing is over with. The lawyer who was helping me is fed up and says if they call again he'd like to speak to them and be happy to represent us if it came to it. Although idk why the CA would go through with anything now that I've sent them papers directly from a government website stating we don't owe them anything. But who knows anymore.

[gdale6]

You are going to have to this settled by a judge and that info from the insurance company along with info from the books you receive each year on whats covered/not covered is evidence in your favor. I might even consider a countersuit claiming damages to your credit but your lawyer should advise you on that one. It seems no one cares anymore if they are out of line in billing someone all that they care about is getting that buck, pretty crooked IMO. Good luck

[Anonymous]

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@gdale6 wrote:

You are going to have to this settled by a judge and that info from the insurance company along with info from the books you receive each year on whats covered/not covered is evidence in your favor. I might even consider a countersuit claiming damages to your credit but your lawyer should advise you on that one. It seems no one cares anymore if they are out of line in billing someone all that they care about is getting that buck, pretty crooked IMO. Good luck

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I texted DH right after I got off the phone with the CA and told him that doctor was crooked. They didn't want to bill L&I in the first place and tried to say it wasn't related to a workplace injury.

The CA said almost word for word the same thing, that since L&I denied payment and it wasn't a workplace injury, we were responsible. The lady sounded very confused when I told her that while yes L&I denied payment they also said we weren't responsible because it was a workplace injury, like the doctor had just convieniently forgotten to mention that part to them... and when I told her I could send the paperwork stating that, she wanted to know if it was actually for the same date and doctor, she was so confused.

So yes, if we end up in court we will file a countersuit (our lawyer said we should).