In collections for nonpayment of bills for services that insurance should have covered — Please Advise

An insurance company that you may be familiar with (idk why some redditors cryptically refer to shitty companies like this, it’s USHEALTH Group and fuck them) has not paid for medical services that were part of my coverage and I was just called today by a debt collector. After months of getting nowhere from dealing with the medical center and insurance, I’m requesting the wisdom of reddit to help me make sense of this situation and delineate a best path forward.

I will start by admitting that I rarely use medical services and am a rookie to our system. As such, I have probably already made some rookie mistakes. Never anticipating that I would be here, I failed to record/capture all of my interactions up until this point. Also, I shared some of the details below with the woman from the collections company. I didn’t at any point claim responsibility for the debt, but I did talk to a debt lady on a recorded line. Curious if that was a dumb thing to do that could come back to bite me.

The timeline:

Got a dermatologist appointment and a recommended mole biopsy in September of 2023 and billed both to insurance.

Got calls in the fall of 2023 from medical center asking for payment, said insurance declined claim because of some issue verifying my DoB. Medical center had and submitted my correct DoB, this was the first instance that smelled of foul play. I call insurance same day asking what was wrong and, they said wrong DoB was sent, I verified with them. Have to get insurance and medical center on a 3-way call to get things sorted and moving. Left the call thinking things we solved.

(I did my part by paying my premiums, WHY am I even part of this process!? /endrant)

Received mail all through winter from insurance asking for me to provide and mail back forms with irrelevant information and I did so and waited for an updated medical bill. Started getting notifications of payment due in the spring from med center. insurance paid a portion of one of the charges on my medical bill, but didn’t touch the mole biopsy, which is clearly part of my coverage. I explained to the billing dept on the phone and they said it’s for me to sort out with the insurer.

(HOW is this still my problem when USHEALTH is the one evading paying their obligation!? /endrant)

I was traveling at the time and put this matter on the backburner for when I got home. Logged in to mychart and saw that my balance had been adjusted down from $700-something to $80-something. AWESOME! It was corrected while I was away and I just paid the remaining bit, case closed. Except that apparently isn’t the case. This afternoon I received mail and a phone call from a collector requesting the difference in the amounts above. I’m hoping that this wasn’t a stupid mistake, but I spoke with the woman and explained the whole situation to her on a recorded line, her offer was to have me forward her my statement of benefits so that she can contact the insurance company and maybe make some headway. Sounded like a good offer, but I’m thinking will this simplify or complicate things for me? Took her number and told her I would try with the med center and insurer first and that if that didn’t work out, I would get back in touch with her.

If it needs saying, I promptly canceled my policy with them a while ago when these problems started, but what are my options now? What are the pros and cons of each? Seems to me that I can:

Pay – I have other plans for that money so that would suck—and honestly—allowing USHEALTH to get away with this shady business practice is as frustrating as the money lost.

Just ignore collections – Could just disappear or could end up on my credit report. Wondering how badly could one instance of dying on this hill hit my credit?

Call the insurer and collections on a 3-way call in an attempt to get the matter sorted, and likely get involved in a tangled mess of health system bs that may end up getting me nowhere.

If you have read this far, thank you for taking the time out of your day to consider my situation! Eager to see what the community thinks.