|
Joel Childers (1966)
When I was a toddler, the center of our rotary phone dial read 168. That was the phone number in our house at one time. In first grade, we had to memorize our home phone number. Mine was 2-7168 which later became MOhawk 2-7168. I remember when we had to dial 0 to call long distance before the 3 digit prefix came to be. Then we were 916-662-7168. Now, here in Spokane Valley, you need to use all 10 digits even to make a local call. Fortunately, every number we call is in the phone's address book which dials automatically.
Which leads me to "unidentified calls" and "call blocking". I recently ended up in the hospital emergency room. I was treated by various staff, tests were performed and an outside surgeon did some bandaid surgery. Insurance covered most of it ($16,500) while I paid my copays and coinsurance. Then, out of the blue, I got an e-mail bill from a medical group I wasn't familiar with. They claimed I owed them over $3,500 for assisting in my emergency care saying my insurance refused to pay them. Of course I was suspicious. Yet a bit of research showed that it was a legitimate firm and one of their PA did attend to me. So I did some serious research and stumbled upon a Federal (and in most states) a State law called The Surprise Billing Act or The Balance Billing Act which prevents this sort of activity. They continued to e-mail, make phone calls and threats. In short the law says that as long as you have any insurance coverage, that when you go to the emergency room of any hospital, you are liable ONLY for your copay and coinsurance in accordance with your policy. Since I have Federal Blue Cross, the Office of Personnel Management advised me to block the company on e-mail and on the phone. After OPM contacted Blue Cross, the harassing company gave up. But I lost a lot of sleep over this.
Since we're at that age when we may need to go to an emergency room, I wanted to share this with ya'll and maybe save somebody else some heartburn.
|
