Paying medical bills can cause illness

Have you ever tried to get a medical bill paid? You literally have to be a brain surgeon to accomplish this task.

So I get this bill from Los Alamitos Radiology Group telling me that I owe them $115 for an ER exam that was done on my son over a year ago.

I paid my deductable at the ER. It was $50. They took that money from me in less than a minute and yet it takes a year to tell me that my insurance didn't pay the rest of the bill.

Should I wait another year to tell them to try again and bill my insurance? Probably not.

I call my insurance group and they inform me that I was not with their IPA at the time of service. They told me that I was still with Alamitos IPA and not Memorial Healthcare IPA. I thought I had switched to Memorial at the beginning of 2006, but that's okay. I will call Alamitos IPA and find out.

So I can Alamitos IPA and they answer the phone "Hello. Coast Medical". I ask if they are still Alamitos IPA and they said yeah. So I then ask why did you change your name to Coast Medical. The lady tells me they didn't change their name...........I refuse to go any further down this useless path. So I then tell her my problem and she tells me that the Customer Service Dept. is in a meeting.

So I ask for Claims Dept. She tells me that Customer Service is in a meeting with Claims Dept. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING.

So I decide to call my doctor's office to find out which IPA I was with during the date of service and the doctor's office answering service says that they are closed for lunch until 1:30pm. I look at the clock and it says 2:05pm. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING.

To be continued......