Dentists, insurance and incompetence

I was going through some old mail recently. I have a bad habit of not opening mail right away. I'd seen something from my old dentist, the fellow I used to go to when I worked with AT&T.
As I'm now working at Motorola and have different insurance, I have since visited a different dentist, one within walking distance of my apartment. I had my normally scheduled checkup a couple weeks ago. Thinking that the mail from the old dentist was a checkup reminder, I put it aside.
A few days ago, as I was going through all the crap mail that I get and shredding it, I saw the mail again. Imagine my surprise when I saw I had a past due balance due of close to $200.
I had last visited this dentist in August of 2007. More than 16 months later, they finally sent me the bill. No explanation. Just that I owed $200. This place has screwed up my bill before, confusing me with a 70-year-old man.
So, upon seeing the bill, I called the dentist's office last weekend, leaving a message asking why I owed this when clearly my old insurance would have covered the bill.
This afternoon, I received a phone call from the office. The stupid woman told me that the office had submitted the claim, but they never received any correspondence from the insurance company. More importantly, they had never received the money to cover my visit.
So, this stupid woman asked if the insurance company had mailed the check to me. No, I explained. This stupid woman than explained that the office had, allegedly, submitted the claim twice and heard nothing from the insurance company.
"Did you try calling them?" I asked.
"Oh, well it's a pain dealing with the insurance company," she said. "Sometimes, we have better luck if the patient calls the insurance company."
Wha.....?
"So, did your office make any attempt whatsoever to actually place a phone call to the insurance company?"
More hemming and hawing. More I don't know-ing.
"So, you can't call the insurance company right now and ask them what's going on?"
"Well....uh....uh....uh...."
By this point I was furious. For one thing, I'd been woken up. I work nights, after all, and I gotta sleep during the day to have any chance of not working while dead. That I can understand, as they're working during normal business hours. Anyway. For another, they sent me a bill sixteen frakking months after I'd actually been there, with no explanation, with no reason why I owed it. For another thing, I went out of my way to visit this particular dentist.
This particular dentist, and my former general physician, both had offices pretty close to my parents' house. I'd been to both since my family moved to Chicago more than 20 years ago. My parents have fallen on hard financial times in the last few years, and both offices had previously made efforts to work with my parents in still getting them the care they needed with a price plan they could afford.
For that matter, I wasn't doing so hot financially for a number of years. It took me several years and some hard work to get a good credit score after falling into trouble in my early 20s.
So, I continued to visit these particular doctors because I figured that if they helped my folks, I should continue to do business with them.
Take that all into account, and I think you'd feel pretty betrayed by this, too.
Yeah, I was pissed off. I'm still pissed off.
I'm pissed off because this frakking place wants me to do their work. Shouldn't they be contacting the insurance company? Couldn't they place a phone call? A simple frakking phone call?
So, in the interests of protecting my credit, I called the insurance company. A five-minute conversation revealed everything I needed to know. They haven't received any claims for all of 2007. The last claim they filled for me was in 2006, which coincidentally was the previous time I'd visited this dentist. To get the claim filled, the dentist must provide proof that they filed the claim before the one year deadline, which was August of this year.
This was all painfully simple stuff. This was something that a simple phone call from the office to the insurance company could have resolved. This was something that should never have involved me, especially more than a year after I last visited. This was something that could have easily been documented in my file.
So, after calling the insurance company, I called the office back. I advised them that this level of ineptitude and laziness is unacceptable. I advised that they need to work this out with the insurance company. I advised that their failure is not my problem. I advised her to call the insurance company and get the information they needed. Chances are she won't.
The next step is a written letter to the office, either hand delivered by me or sent via certified mail. Considering the level of screwups that have occurred, those are my options. I can't trust standard mail or a fax to these idiots. If they don't misplace it, they won't know what to do with it.
There is zero chance of me paying this bill. If the dentist doesn't get his money, that's not my problem. I was covered under insurance at the time of the visit. The office's failure to follow up properly and make sure they got paid is not my problem.
I know it won't make much difference, but I will make every effort to publicize the sheer stupidity employed by this dentist. I'll go to the Better Business Bureau.
Stuff like this clearly demonstrates why loyalty never goes unpunished.