And One More Thing

When I was recounting the day I lost the will to live I forgot one thing. I'm not sure how I left this out because it was extremely frustrating. In the midst of all that other stuff going on, I got a call from a debt collection agency. It was about the radiology bill for the MRI I had back in 2016. 

The young lady asked me how I'd like to take care of the payment. 

"I'd like for Aetna to pay it. Actually, they told me not to worry about it that they were taking care of it. So I need to phone them. Again."

She asked if I would like for her to call them. But I said I would call because I really had a number of things I wanted to say to them. But for reasons that aren't all that surprising, I just couldn't bring myself to call Aetna on that day. 

But I did call them yesterday. And as usual, was getting no closer to resolution. I repeated the story of how back in August of 2016 my doctor had ordered an MRI. Of course, he sent the order to an imaging center that was out of network. When they called and told me how much it was going to cost, I declined making the appointment and immediately called Aetna to find an "in network" provider. After nearly a month of calling Aetna once of twice a week, I got a call from an imaging center in Frisco that said I had approval to come in and get the MRI. My best guess is that imaging centers do not make random calls to people who "might" need or want an MRI. My assumption was that they had been in contact with Aetna and felt pretty confident they would be paid because I left without paying anything. (I was expecting a co-pay and was surprised that there wasn't one.)

This story got repeated several times and each time the customer service rep went back to the same old song and dance.

"The claim was denied because there was no pre-certification."

"But you approved it. They didn't call me out of the blue."

And the rep countered with "But there is no pre-certification on file. Would you like to hold while I check with the pre-certification department to see if they have one?"

Seriously? It's been over a year, who thinks they're going to miraculously find one now. (But I don't always say what I think.) "I don't care whether you have one or not. What you do and don't have is not my problem, even though you are trying to making it my problem."

"Would you like for me to check with them and call you back."

"No. I already know the answer to that one."

"Would you like me to continue to try to help you?"

"I don't think you can hep me. My next call will be to a lawyer."

"Why don't I connect you to a resolution specialist?"

"Okay."

A resolution specialist? You would think that every customer service rep would be a resolution specialist. 

I got to tell my sad tale one more time. Of course, the story on their side changed again. This time it was because the provider waited too long to file the claim. Plus they didn't get the pre-certification. (In the past it had always been because the doctor didn't send the referral. - Now it's because the imaging center didn't get the required pre-certification.)

The bottom line is that I don't owe the money. And apparently the provider should know this. The Aetna resolution specialist will talk to the provider and the collection agency to get the problem resolved and I shouldn't have to deal with it again. We'll see.