Medical Bills, provider failed to submit and now suing me

[rickl750]

Hi Everyone,
I have an issue with a lab suing me because they never received payment. Four years ago my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer and at that time I was uninsured and unemployed. We where able to sign her up for Medicaid and all bills where pretty much taken care of. This one lab keept asking us to pay them $2600. for a biopsy and we informed them they had to submit this to Medicaid, we did this at least a dozen times and called them in about a two year period. After the last phone call we stopped receiving notices until a few weeks ago we received a bill with interest and a few days later a letter from the court indicating we where being sued. I spoke with their attorney and his reply was you should have told them you where eligible for Medicaid. As I said we did but apparently they never submitted the bill to Medicaid for whatever reason. Any suggestions on how to handle this?

Thank you,

Rick

 

[ndragon]

I would write a letter to the billing agency explaining that the charges should be billed through Medicaid. Include a copy of the insurance card for the time period in question (proving that you were actually covered), and even see if you can get the instructions for how to submit the bill. Basically, give them all of the information necessary to bill Medicaid and leave no room for misunderstanding.
Did you submit the bill to Medicaid yourself? It may not be a bad idea to do that.
Good luck.

-Nick