Emergency room billed someone else’s insurance for my daughter’s visit and they accepted the claim. Is this fraud?

A few months ago my daughter had an overnight emergency room visit for what turned out to be a minor ear infection. We get the bill and they claim they “can’t find our insurance information,” despite it being provided at time of admittance. Whatever, they despite their mistake, or purposeful screwup to get more money, gave us an option to provide the needed information.

So we do, and a month or so goes by and we receive the adjusted bill. But it’s not our insurance they’ve billed, and they list daughter’s shorted first name as opposed to her legal full first name. For example if your name is Jonathan, they’d have you down as “Jon” on the final bill. Not sure how that’s possible, but there it is.

That name weirdness aside, they literally billed some random person’s insurance and their insurance didn’t deny the claim. So there’s that as well. And it’s not even remotely similar to my employer provided health insurance in name or in industry either. It’s just really mind boggling.

I’m not paying until this is sorted, but they literally will not answer the phone. By they I mean the billing service, not the hospital. Tried calling three times today alone and each time I got to the whole “the next available agent” recording the call would end.

Is this even legal? It feels fraudulent to be honest.

(On a side note, last fall my youngest got extremely sick at only 8 weeks old and the same hospitals billing department gave me a different headache. Magically “can’t locate” my insurance info despite it being provided at admittance, via their web portal and then over the phone before they set everything straight. Yeah, it took three times for them to get their act together. Great children’s hospital, useless billing department.)

submitted by /u/Lilsomms
[comments]