Young Love

I consider my husband and I to still be young - or at least young at heart - and plan on claiming this for at least the next 40 years! However, I didn't expect this... We had a notice that some of our hospital bills had payment rejected by the insurance company. Oh boy. It had to be the insurance through my work, and I was not looking forward to the battle with them over coverage. Husband is covered, they should pay at least something, and not completely reject payment! I decided to start with the hospital billing office this morning. They send out generic bills with simply a dollar amount due - no services listed, so there's no way of knowing exactly what we're paying for. I wanted to be armed with knowledge when I called the dreaded insurance company and maybe even get a denial code or something. Surprise #1 - After 30 minutes of calling the billing office at the local hospital and after being on hold automatically being funneled into a message system at least 5 times, I decided to give the insurance company a shot without specific information. I expected to be on hold forever and ever and ever with the insurance company, not our local hospital! I got right through to an insurance customer service representative. (Surprise #2) Surprise #3 was noted as I was dialing the insurance company - they have Husband's year of birth listed as 2008. Now, I know I married a young whippersnapper, but I sure didn't think he was that young!! As I was talking to the agent (who of course can't discuss anything about Husband's file with me without a written release), and after mentioning the faulty DOB, she said that might have been the reason for the denial. If the years didn't match up, the insurance company would (rightfully) claim they did not have an individual on the policy with information given by the hospital and deny coverage. Sounds like an easy fix - just call the hospital and ask them to resubmit the claim. (Work is fixing the DOB with the insurance company, so they should match up.) Now, if only I can get through to pass on that message to the billing office!!