I do believe she was not shown the door. I spoke with her often and the last time she helped me she told me that she was being promoted. IIRC it was to a different department. They didn’t want someone who was actually customer/provider friendly really helping them!
My wife had cataract surgery. She talked to the surgeon and the front office. She showed everybody her health insurance card. They said she was covered.
I don’t remember why but I decided to call the back office. Something didn’t sit right with me. The back office said , “Your wife is not insured. The contract with the insurance company expired”.
We threw away a few hundred bucks because we had to start over with a different surgeon. Luckily, we didn’t throw away a couple of thousand.
Another surgeon did the operation. One eye. Then the next eye. We got the bills. They were confusing. We paid them. Got another bill 6 months later. We called the office. The first bill only covered one eye.
Is there a statute of limitations on bills? Then my wife asked for a better price. We ended up paying the best price the office offered even though we weren’t covered by that plan.
With all this nonsense, we switched to Kaiser. I think Kaiser billed me twice for something. It was unclear. I didn’t feel like dealing with Kaiser so I let it go. But next time… 
This industry is very bad. Very opaque and full of errors.
In our state, statute of limitations on medical bills is 4 years.
4 years to send the bills out?
Yes I believe so.
That is ridiculous.
We all have to pay for health insurance which is so expensive as it is but god forbid you have to go to a doctor and have to use it. And if you have a problem that requires further testing or extensive doctor visits then really I feel we are at the mercy of these insurance companies who don’t really care if you are in a life threatening situation. I keep telling my college aged daughter health is wealth. Start taking good care of yourself from a young age but even if you do anything can still happen. As I get older healthcare costs is one thing I worry about the most. These companies act like they are doing us a favor when we are paying so much for which we expect decent affordable service. There has to be a better solution then what we currently have in place. On the other hand the path to becoming a doctor is so lengthy and costly I don’t know many people who can fully pay for the cost of their education to get trained. Some places the doctors are so busy it takes weeks to get an appointment.
Well you cant stall on paying for 4 years and then claim the statute of limitations has run.
I am not an attorney-- here is some CA info on billing and collections https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/what-is-the-statute-of-limitations-for-medical-bil-797395.html
@jym626, I understand that.
I don’t want to receive a bill 3 1-2 years after a procedure.
Dstark-
Watch this - unbelievable . http://6abc.com/business/special-report-local-dermatology-practice-accused-of-overcharging/686300/
@jym626, I think you are trying to raise my blood pressure. 
That is outrageous.
There is something called timely filing. Every insurance has a set time a provider is allowed to file a new claim. Most are about a year, but quite a few are only 3 months.
I do strongly believe most providers are keenly aware that you can’t up code, you can’t have multiple price lists, etc.
I hire people who have worked at insurance companies and they were paid bonuses to not pay claims. I also have my people posting eobs have the fee schedules pinned up on their walls…insurance will under pay by a few dollars. No biggie for one claim, over a year it can add up to thousands.
But hear me now everyone I have been watching this for almost 3 years…the states that expanded medicaid will soon have to start paying themselves instead of the federal government. Medicaid pays better than any commercial insurance for me. The states are going to go broke when they have to pay themselves. Get anyone you know in those states onto other insurance by the end of this year.
I don’t think so.
The states will eventually pay 10 percent for the medicaid expansion. The federal government will still pay 90 percent.
Where does this stuff come from?
jym, the first bill that went in DID have the ICD-9 code. A lot of providers around here were advised to put both ICD-9 and ICD-10 codes on bills during that transition period. UHC kicked them because both were listed.
In Maryland, the provider has a year to submit. Once the oncology lab billed the previous administrator for our insurance (same plan, but they changed admins) and of course, it was kicked. The lab had my current insurance card with the correct billing submission info. They never resubmitted it, but were trying to collect from me almost four years later. That was a $1200 bill they missed out on!
My cousin had ovarian cancer. Had to have a complete hysterectomy. Picked an in network provider and hospital. Everything preapproved. Then received a bill from the anesthesiologist. For $500. Office told her it was because it was applied to her deductible. In the first place, this was in August and her deductible had been met sometime in January. That and her deductible was $450. So she called the insurance company. Was told it was turned down because it was not preapproved. Seriously? They expected her to get preapproval for the anesthesiologist who she did not meet until the surgery date? Insurance covered the surgeon, hospital stay, recovery, all tests and treatment for the cancer but expected her to have surgery without anesthesia?
She told them to sue her.
Eyeamom is correct about the time for the initial filing of a claim. I thought you were asking about collections of claims. Apologies. IIRC, here, the time to file a claim was not a state regulation but rather each insurer had its time limit. In one case a patient changed insurers and didn’t tell us. The claim paid but then we were, sometime later, required to return the money as their first policy had termed. The patient was not very responsive to the billing office’s attempts to reach them and did not provide the new insurance until it was too late to file. And of course the patient was not interested in taking any ownership of this. Fun.
The “good news” is the insurance companies are only supposed to have 18 months to ask for repayment if a claim is processed incorrectly (i.e. They think they overpaid on a claim). But even though the provider can write to the insurance company if the request for repayment is beyond the 18 month period ( and even if their request is wrong) the insurance company can either simply withhold that amount from another patient’s claim or, since some insurance companies now require that they auto deposit into the provider’s bank account, they can just suck it right back out. Oh, and Medicare can apparently do an audit and if they think money is owed, they can not only suck it out of the business account, but any other personal account the dr has at that same bank. Many docs are now advised to set up their Medicare payment at a bank they have not other accounts with.
Fun, huh.
And because patients are perfectly capable of messing up: My MIL did not like that her retiree health insurance was changing. So, she just kept using the old cards and the insurance company’s Pharmacy Benefits Manager kept approving the multitude of prescriptions she filled at the local pharmacy. She was happy…until about six months later when the insurance company sent her a demand for repayment. Took me months to get that mess straightened out. Found she had pretty much every insurance card she’d ever been issued in her wallet. Sometimes she’d give a doctor’s office one card for her primary carrier, and to some other doctor’s office she’d give her secondary card as the primary insurance. (She had Blue Cross AND Blue Shield AND Medicare. It was fun. Not.)
I feel,the same way about my anesthesiologist bill. How in the world would,that get “pre approved”? I had no idea who that doc was until I met him IN the OR for my procedure.
I’m patiently waiting for,this to get sorted out between Medicare and my supplemental. Right now, they are saying the $68 I need to pay is part of some deductible…what deductible??
Sounds like H’s struggles in the months/years he was still working tho he was old enough for Medicare but didn’t yet start part B and therefore had a ton of claims bounce were a picnic compared to the hassles everyone is facing. 8-}
Fortunately, since he’s retired and now has B plus insurance, everything’s great, relatively speaking.
My mom had a ton of insurance cards too and I called insurer to clarify and tossed all the old ones. Think we avoided a big mess.