Insurance/Billing Office Frustrations

I need to vent. Actually I really needed to vent this morning. Sorry to Tyler for getting the brunt of it all.

STORY: I took Ashlyn to the eye doctor (Dr. Dries) at Primary Children's for her neuroblastoma checkup A YEAR AND A HALF AGO. I received the statement from them that said pay this amount by such and such a date and the amount was $0.00, insurance pending. So I didn't think much. Just figured we were waiting for the insurance. A couple of months later I received another statement with the exact same thing. I still didn't think much about it. A year later I finally called the insurance AND THEY HAD NEVER RECEIVED ANYTHING. So I made a phone call to the billing department and they had the wrong insurance on file. Now I still don't understand that since we had been in several times before and our insurance had never changed. The lady I talked to was very nice and said she would submit it again but the insurance might reject it since it wasn't filed in a timely manner. I asked her if I would be responsible for whatever the insurance didn't pay. She said they would probably just end up writing it off. Sure enough, the insurance denied it and I get another bill showing $0.00 that I owe.

TODAY: I was sure I would have received bills for the rest of my life, so I decided to call the billing department about it. I explained the situation on the phone to the girl and she immediately made it clear that it was my responsibility to pay the bill, even though it was clearly their fault for not submitting the correct insurance information. She was a little snippy with me, asked me why I didn't call our insurance earlier, and told me submitting information to the insurance was a service they did for me. I became very upset and told her I refused to pay it. If they wanted me to pay for it, WHY DIDN'T THEY BILL ME CORRECTLY INSTEAD OF SENDING BILLS WITH ZERO AMOUNT and telling me INSURANCE PENDING? There is so much about insurance I don't understand, but was she basically telling me that I should call my insurance after every doctor's visit to make sure everything's been paid? The funny thing is she asked me how I liked my service. Well, we've been very happy with Dr. Dries and I told her so. But if she expected me to CONTRIBUTE the amount owed because I liked the service, she was mistaken.

I don't think I've ever been that upset, nor have I ever been treated that way. I finally yelled at her that I wanted to talk to her manager. She eventually came back to the phone to tell me he was in a meeting, that they would write it off, and then she hung up on me. I felt badly about how I handled the situation. She caught me off guard, and I'm sure I could've done better.

I HATE DEALING WITH INSURANCE ISSUES!