Need help with Pap smear claim

Hello all,

Background: 28 year old female in Washington, D.C. with UnitedHealthcare PPO from my federal employer.

Here’s a quick summary of the last 8 months of back and forth with my doctor, Labcorp, and UnitedHealthcare.

January: go to doctor for regular Pap smear, doctor starts Pap smear and says she’s doing a second swab, I don’t know how many swabs are in a Pap smear since they aren’t very frequent and I just say okay and move on, Pap smears are covered by my insurance

March – May: I receive a $477.23 bill from Labcorp from the Pap smear, I call and they say it’s coded as something different (coded as other microbiological sample), I call my doctor and they say the second swab wasn’t the Pap smear and was an extra step, I explained I wasn’t given that information nor was it made clear this was anything beyond the traditional Pap smear, doctor says they’ll submit a new code to Labcorp for the second swab, bills keep coming and Labcorp says they haven’t received anything from my doctor and UnitedHealthcare hasn’t received anything from Labcorp

June: I pay 1/2 the bill to avoid going to collections

July: second half of the bill comes in tne mail, I pay it to avoid collections (I was too scared to just not pay), and start calling again

Today: called all three entities again and they all say the other ones need to update or review or refine or etc, etc, etc.

What are my options at this point? I feel I truly shouldn’t have to pay as it wasn’t clearly outlined this was an extra step in the process that wasn’t the traditional Pap smear.

Any advice is appreciated! Thanks!