Posted on 09/21/2021 7:49:53 AM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
Brittany Giroux Lane gave birth to her daughter, Alexandra, a few days before Christmas in 2018. The baby had dark eyes and longish legs. She had also arrived about 13 weeks early, and weighed just two pounds.
Alexandra initially thrived in the neonatal intensive care unit at Mount Sinai West. Ms. Lane, 35, recalls the nurses describing her daughter as a “rock star” because she grew so quickly. But her condition rapidly worsened after an infection, and Alexandra died early on the morning of Jan. 15 at 25 days old.
Last summer, Ms. Lane started receiving debt collection notices. The letters, sent by the health plan Cigna, said she owed the insurer over $257,000 for the bills it accidentally covered for Alexandra’s care after Ms. Lane switched health insurers.
Medical billing experts who reviewed the case described it as a dispute between a large hospital and a large insurer, with the patient stuck in the middle.
“The letters mean I’m constantly reliving the day, and that is such a hard space to be in,” Ms. Lane said. “I feel so frustrated that the hospital is making decisions about their own bottom line that influence our potential future, and the memory of our child.”
(Excerpt) Read more at dnyuz.com ...
Our son and wife had a son that only survived a short time; crushing. Northwestern Memorial Hospital, among the best.
A mothers group made beautiful outfits, we got hold him for a bit...
Im so sorry for the loss of your grand baby. How very heartbreaking.
When you don’t have health insurance (like us), this sort of thing doesn’t happen.
> she owed the insurer over $257,000 for the bills it accidentally covered for Alexandra’s care after Ms. Lane switched health insurers <
So it’s the insurer’s fault. And the lady evidently acted in good faith. Case closed. The lady owes nothing, IMO.
No chit
The insurance company did nothing. A person working there did. These people have names and addresses.
The article says there was confusion because the baby was born right at the time when she was changing jobs and thus changing health insurance companies.
And it also indicates that both insurance companies paid.
There were apparently issues with refunding the credit balance on the patient account to the appropriate insurance company which overpaid.
I don’t fully understand hospital billing(does anyone?) but, this seems so absurd that this happened, if both insurers paid so there were overpayments on the patient account. It seems a simple process to refund the overpayment and zero out the account, not send a bill to the patient.
Damn buddy....no words for that.
Sorry for your loss.
I hate to read the words “...a dispute between a large hospital and a large insurer, with the patient stuck in the middle.” At least there is a chance that it can get resolved in the patient’s favor.
The only way it could be worse is if it read “...a dispute between a large hospital and GOVERNMENT PROVIDED HEALTH INSURANCE, with the patient stuck in the middle” in which case you would be stuck in Hell for all eternity.
My wife has done absolutely yeoman’s work the past 30 years fighting the insurance companies for correct payment. She has the patience of Job whereas I explode in a rage at the rank stupidity of all the finger pointing, insane rules and regs, the lack of accountability by anybody and the inability to find anybody who will take ownership to resolve conflicts. There’s little I hate more in the world than dealing with insurance companies.
“When you don’t have health insurance (like us), this sort of thing doesn’t happen.”
Interesting. You explanation might be valuable to a lot of us.
I’d say those parents just need to declare bankruptcy and get on with their lives.
Seems like a hospital shouldn’t build up a huge bill without checking along the way if the patient can pay.
I’m so sorry for your loss.
I’d say those parents just need to declare bankruptcy and get on with their lives.
So sorry for your loss. I have made some of those bereavement gowns for newborns. Your post reminds me I should do more. I have at least two whole wedding gowns donated to me for that purpose.
If they have a low or negative net worth, bankruptcy may be an option if no other choice but a medium or high net worth and it would definitely not be worth it.
“When you don’t have health insurance (like us), this sort of thing doesn’t happen.”
...so you go to “free” clinics and hospitals? Not quite sure how not have insurance is a good thing.
I recently had a endoscopy - routine - and the hospital put in a wrong code that suggested the procedure was ended prematurely. Insurance said they do not cover that. We sent them the doctors notes, the pathology reports, the recovery notes, etc. that priced the procedure was fully performed. hospital kept saying they had coded it correctly and we owed them. It took months on the phone for hours at a time to fix an obvious clerical error that would have cost us $3,000 This situation is tailor made for my wife, she never lets something like this go. Ever. Once it was fixed insurance paid promptly. But i would have given up and paid because they’d have worn me down. And that would be the last routine endoscopy I ever got, which is dumb but that’s how Id react, I know it.
It’s for things like this that GoFundMe exists.
Married couple, that’s nice, but it appears the wife carried the medical insurance, also fine.
But then she changes jobs and insurance at 28 weeks into a pregnancy. Pretty interesting(dumb)decision.
Sorry, but this story is kind of similar to the ones where 65 year old parents are facing financial ruin due to their kids college loans. Decisions and their consequences can be tricky.
We are both almost 68. We currently have medicare type A, which we don’t expect to use.
We’ve saved over $100,000 in insurance premiums since Obamacare’s individual mandate went into effect. And nowadays most insurance has such high deductibles that it is pretty much worthless for everything except the most serious stuff.
As Christians, we put our faith in the Great Healer and take responsibility for our own health. We take no prescription drugs. If one of us gets cancer, we do natural remedies. And we may die. The Lord will take us at a time of His choosing.
And don’t tell anyone, but when you don’t have insurance, health care can be a LOT cheaper. Part of it is that it is very expensive for doctors to even deal with insurance companies. When you hand them a credit card like you are paying for an oil change, sometimes their sigh of relief is almost tangible.
America’s health-care system is a frankenstein of crony-capitalism, bloated bureaucracy, massive government intervention based on socialist ideology.
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