Hostage!

So back in October I got stitches in my eyebrow from an incident involving Jordan, some binoculars, and AirWick.

I went to Good Samaritan Hospital for the stitches and everything was swell. After my face was sewn back together, they just sent me on my way. I inquired about them taking my insurance information but they said it was all taken care of and everything was fine. So I went on my merry way.

It is now July and here is what went wrong in this scenario. Good Sam assumed that my USC student insurance was the plan I wanted to cover my visit and didn't involve me in the conversation about what was going on. I didn't do much to help the situation by letting this all fly by and not asking more questions and demanding more answers. So now we (and insurance companies) are in an epic battle over money that will all be resolved soon because we both realize the errors made by both of us. I have about 10 more hours worth of phone calls and time on hold ahead, but after next Monday I should be golden. Ugh.

In regard to these stitches I have another bone to pick... After the procedure I was sent a bill for physicians fees (totaling more than $600) which I promptly paid in full thinking this was my total hospital bill. I later figured out the error in my thinking and called them up to figure out if they had billed my insurance first etc etc. Turned out they didn't, so I was able to fill out an online form so they could process my insurance info blah blah blah. Long story short, they didn't contact me in any way about a credit so I figured it just wasn't covered and I was out the $600+ bucks. However, because of the craziness with Good Sam, I figured it would be a good idea to give the physician's billers a call to see if any similar error was made. They told me over the phone, Oh yea, you have a credit of $500+ we'll send it to you in approx 1 month. Ummm.... WTF? They were just going to keep the $$ hoping I would never ask for it. That seems a tad bit shady.

I am largely dissatisfied with this process as a whole. Such a headache over some shitty assumptions that were made while I was having my face sewn up.