Yes, it makes you wonder just what the hell is going on, is the post office throwing mail away and not delivering or are they just not sending the stuff. In this particular instance the alleged "creditor" is a group that the name starts with , "PA " which I take to mean some physicians assistants group.
I will end up exploring this further later on but right now since he was given thirty days to respond to the attorney's demands that is what we had to do first.
It also makes me wonder just how much insurance fraud can actually be taking place in the current system we use. My sister used to work for Blue Cross in their claims processing center for years and years and she said that as long as they received a bill from a doctor or hospital that had the correct name of the insured, policy number that matched the name of the insured, and a properly coded procedure their company would never question the claim and would pay the portion the policy was to cover based on the policy conditions of in network or out of network based on the status of the care provider. They never contact the insured person to ask if the service or procedure was even rendered the insured person. According to her the insurance companies, or at least the one she worked for, didn't have the manpower or time to check into every claim submitted by service providers to see if the claim was a legitimate claim.
With the amount of the number of these stand alone "emergency rooms" that have been popping up all around the area it makes me wonder if these hospitals or physicians haven't figured that out and are pouring tons of fraudulent claims in to these insurance companies for payment. The system looks pretty ripe for the picking if other insurance companies operate in similar fashion as Blue Cross has shown to operate.
Now with the government requirement of a person's medical records being required to be kept online, just who all has access to that data? I would have to think that doctors offices would since they would be making entries into the patient data base to keep it up to date. Emergency rooms and hospitals too would probably have access as well. Can the data be pulled on a group of "patients using their zip code?
If that were the case it could be wide open for scamming, a data entry person could just run a report for any zip code they wanted , with a date range of a year old or so and then sell the list to someone who could take it and start creating some bogus charges and have an attorney go collect for them, or an attorney could be doing it themselves. All they would need was another business name and a P.O. Box for the checks to be mailed to or a credit card processing company to process credit card payments.
This might very well be a legitimate bill he owes and the amount really isn't that much in the grand scheme of what we did have to pay out of pocket for that emergency room visit. The questions that need answered have now been sent to the attorney so we will just see what he comes back with in the form of a response. The amount being less than a couple hundred bucks would make it where most people probably wouldn't even question it and just pay it to make it go away.
I try and stand on doing what is right, not what is easy. So we will play the game and put the ball back in their court and let them earn their money if they are entitled to it by proving their claim.
If anything, this is a good teaching opportunity to show him how a person needs to respond when threatened.
Thanks for sharing your story and a glimpse of how that hospital did things.