Several weeks ago I went to what I thought was my local urgent care for pretty bad flu-like symptoms. My insurance has a $10 copay for urgent cares & 25% copay for ER bills. Turns out, I went to an ER and not an urgent care. In my sick state I hadn't realized it was an ER, oops. They have x-rays and CT scans with a doctor available 24/7, but no cath lab. If they had someone with a heart attack or stroke, they'd need to transport them out by ambulance to another ER. How is this an ER? Anyways, this is besides the point.
Upon arriving to the ER, I asked them if this visit would be covered by my insurance, and they said it would. They draw blood & do a chest x-ray. The doctor comes in for less than 5 minutes, tells me that I have what looks to be the start of pneumonia, and prescribes me an antibiotic along with mucinex & other symptom relievers & then sends me home. No big deal, right?
Several weeks later, I get a bill from my insurance stating they negotiated the $3,000 ER bill down to $600. I'm on the hook for $150ish and they'll pay the other $450ish. Ok. I also get a bill from the doctor/provider for $1600. It states I'm on the hook for the full $1600 for that one. Confused, I call my insurance. They state the provider is out of network & the insurance rep advised me to contact the ER. The ER never told me this doctor was out of my network.
How should I go about contacting the ER? Should I phone them? Do I write a formal letter? What exactly do I say/write?
TLDR- Insurance refuses to cover out of network $1600 doctor bill from when I visited an in network ER. What do I do?
Submitted August 12, 2019 at 09:10PM by Billabybillamewhy https://ift.tt/2Hh6dnV
