It's Not the PowerBall, But We'll Take It

There are a few bills that I've been ignoring lately, because I didn't think that we really owed them money, so I figured if I just didn't pay them, they'd go away.

Oddly enough, that strategy seems to have worked. In spades.

First, there was a bill for $130-odd from the dentist. When I had all that work done back in January and February, they told me what my insurance would and wouldn't cover and I paid the difference up front, so I couldn't figure out how I still owed them anything.

I finally called yesterday to check on it and, whaddya know, I have a $0 balance, and it's all good. Woo hoo, victory #1.

Then I called the fertility clinic, about a couple of different bills that we've received lately, one for $75 to a pathology lab for my endometrial biopsy, and one for $707 to the clinic, for Shrike's prescreening lab work.

It was my understanding that all that was covered in the damn-near $40,000 that we paid them for the "all-inclusive" shared risk IVF fee.

When I talked to the donor IVF financial girl today, she explained that the $707 wouldn't actually be that much, because that was before they billed Shrike's insurance company. $6o of it was something that had been denied, but they ought to pay 80% of the remainder, so we should only owe around $200.

Okay, that's a big improvement, but I reiterated that I thought this was all covered by what we'd already paid.

"Oh no, that was for the IVF. The prescreening is separate," she told me.

"But we got the all inclusive plan, and paid you like $40,000, and that was supposed to cover everything."

"Well, I'm looking at your account, and you've got the $25,000 donor IVF, and $8000 prescreening and $6500 donor meds and, oh wait, hang on a minute. . . ."

After putting me on hold forever, she came back on the line and asked if she could look into it and get back to me later today.

Sure, no problem - because this was already covered and I don't want to pay $200 that I don't think we owe.

A couple of hours later, I received this email from her:

I wanted to let you know the update on your account. It looks like you had purchased the shared risk all inclusive program, included your donor's prescreening.

At this point, I'm thinking "Yay, we don't owe them $200!" but she continues. . .

What I should have done was only collected the shared risk fees of ivf & medications since Shrike had insurance for pre-screening.

Hmmm . . . .

So our supervisor is in the process of returning that $8,000 fee back to you and then you will just pay the balance of what Shrike's insurance will not pick up after being submitted.

No. Fucking. Way .

I called back to confirm that I'd understood that correctly.

Yep, they are cutting us a check for $8000 that we never should have paid them.

Out of that, we'll have to pay the $75 for my test, plus what the insurance doesn't cover of Shrike's tests - but it won't be 20% of $707, it will be $60, plus 20% of the "authorized amount" which is bound to be well less than what they are billing for. So, probably less than $200 or so.

With the rest of the money, we will pay off the home equity loan, and then still have about $2000 to pay on my car.

I am a bit annoyed that, by the time we get the check, we will have paid six months of interest on a loan that we never actually needed, but on the other hand, not only could they have just told me, "Oh yeah, you're right, that was covered," today, and kept their $8000 along with whatever Shrike's insurance company pays, but back in December they wrote off about $2500 in bills that we had expected my insurance company would pay but they didn't.

So, I don't suppose I've really got grounds to complain about less than $200 in interest charges.

Oh yeah, and they made us a baby, so you know, there's that.

As I said above, we haven't exactly won the lottery, and we're not exactly home-free, but we will be home-equity-debt-free, and that is huge.

We were only paying about $100/month on that loan (plus "found money" like tax refunds and "economic stimulus" checks) so it doesn't change our cash flow much but it does make it a little more acceptable to consider using that line of credit for upcoming Peeper-preparation expenses, and to help with over-all expenses while I'm out on maternity leave - especially since I'd like to take twelve weeks, but probably won't have but about a week of paid leave saved up (if that) plus my Aflac coverage.

So, I'd definitely have to say that this is the second best news we've ever gotten from the folks at the fertility clinic!