Doctor's office won't submit claim to insurance after 5 months
I'm a business law student, so medical stuff isn't really my specialty. I'll share with you what I know though. First, as to the legality, I'm not aware of anything making it illegal for them to consider their business with you concluded. Absent any contract between you and the doctor, it seems to me that you agreed to pay them in cash. If I was the business, I'd assume our business had been concluded as well. As for any contracts between the insurance company and the doctor's office, as far as I know, that's between them. That wouldn't give you standing to sue the doctor. I'm unfamiliar with a patient submitting insurance claims, but if that's something you are allowed to do with your insurance company and all you need is more information, submit a request for your medical records to the doctor. Under United States law, your medical records are yours. You have a right to receive a copy of them. Keep in mind though that the doctor's office may charge you a small copying fee to cover expenses they incur while making a copy for you. As far as complaining, I would suggest your local Better Business Bureau. Each state generally has a medical board which oversees doctors. You might lodge a complaint with them as well. I hope this helps. Keep in mind that I'm not an attorney. This is not legal advice. This is only what I personally would do if I were in your situation. You can and should consult an attorney who is licensed to practice law in your particular jurisdiction.
I do wonder if part of this is a phenomenon I've seen numerous times in the US:   Woman gets pregnant, barely shows up to work for the next 5 months until birth, camps out on FMLA for three months before simply ignoring any communications from the company for the next several months. Finally, a good 6-8 months after the birth she notifies the company she won't be working anymore. Meanwhile, she's been getting insurance benefits the entire time and HR is too afraid of a lawsuit to cut her loose.   Her position has either been unfilled the entire time (requiring her coworkers to cover her share of the work at expense of their own lives), or if the manager is more prescient than most, has already been backfilled, but is still in a blocking pattern preventing other hires but at least not making coworkers' lives miserable. I understand that if I have multiple health insurance policies, I can only make claim from only one of them if ever I incur medical expenses (I'm from the Philippines). In the US, you cannot simultaneously submit a claim for payment of a medical bill, or request reimbursement for a bill already paid, to multiple insurance companies, but if you are covered by more  than one policy, then any part of a claim not paid by one company  can be submitted to another company that is also covering you. In fact, if you have employer-paid or employer-provided coverage, most  insurance companies will want your employer-provided insurance company  to be billed first, and will cover whatever is not paid by the employer coverage. For example, if the employer coverage pays 80% of your doctor's bill, the private insurance will pay the remaining 20%. But, the private  insurance policies are also quite expensive.  Some professional groups in the US offer major medical coverage to  their US members, and might be offering this to non-US members as well (though I suspect not).  These policies have large deductibles so that coverage kicks in only when the total medical expenses in that year (whether wholly or partially reimbursed, or not reimbursed at all) exceed the large deductible.  These types of policies actually pay out to only a few people - if you have more than, say, $20,000 of medical expenses in a year, you have been quite ill,  and thus the premiums are usually much smaller than full-fledged coverage  insurance policies which pay out much more frequently because of much smaller deductibles. Application &amp; processing an application for obtaining a Registration under the Act to Regional PF commissioner. We would be receiving and keeping a track of all the Nomination &amp; Declaration Forms (Form#2) of all new enrollments for onward submission to PF Office. Our Team would be responsible for Submission of Nomination Forms (Form#2). We would be allotting the Individual P.F. A/c. Nos. and maintain their A/c.'s in the devised P.F. Register to be maintained. Monthly Payment Challans to be computed alongwith the desired MIS Reports would be our responsibility and the same would be handed over to your HR Team to make the payment on or before 15th of every month. Preparation and compilation of Monthly and Annual Returns would be our responsibility. All the Payments and Returns would be filed within the stipulated time and the adherence would be monitored by us. We would be submit application for transfer of fund , withdrawal applications and application for non- refundable claims for House repair / purchase of flat/ for post matriculate education , etc. We would be liasoning on behalf of the establishment with the authorities for ensuring smooth functioning, follow ups and retrieving the Annual Accounts Slips. We would also be attending the periodical Inspections on behalf of the establishment. The Responsibility of the Assessment would be limited for the period which would be coverable under our service tenure. We will keep the Company posted on all Amendments &amp; Development of the Act / various circulars issued by SRO time to time for awareness of employees as well as employer. A financial institution is not obligated to offer you a loan. They will only offer you a loan if they believe that they will make money off you. They use all the info available in order to determine if offering you a loan is profitable.  In short, whether they offer you a loan, and the interest rate they charge for that loan, is based on a few things: How much does it cost the bank to borrow money? [aka: how much does the bank need to pay people who have savings accounts with them?]; How much does the bank need to spend in order to administer the loan? [ie: the loan officer's time, a little time for the IT guy who helps around the office, office space they are renting in order to allow the transaction to take place]; and How many people will 'default' and never be able to repay their loan? [ex: if 1 out of 100 people default on their loans, then every one of those 100 loans needs to be charged an extra 1% in order to recover the money the bank will lose on the person who defaults]. What we are mostly interested in here is #3: how likely are you to default? The bank determines that by determining your income, your assets, your current debts outstanding, your past history with payments (also called a credit score), and specifically to mortgages, how much the house is worth.  If you don't have a long credit history, and because you don't have a long income history, and because you are putting <10% down on the condo [20% is often a good % to strive for, and paying less than that can often imply you will need mandatory mortgage insurance, depending on jurisdiction] the bank is a little more uncertain about your likelihood to pay.  Banks don't like uncertainty, and they can deal with that uncertainty in two ways: (1) They can charge you a higher interest rate; OR (2) They can refuse you the loan. Now just because one bank refuses you a loan, doesn't mean all will - but being refused by one bank is probably a good indication that many / most institutions would refuse you, because they all use very similar analytical tools to determine your 'risk level'. If you are refused a loan, you can try again at another institution, or you can wait, save a larger down payment, and build your credit history by faithfully paying your credit card every month, paying your utilities, and making your car and rent payments on time. This will give the banks more comfort that you will have the ability to pay your mortgage every month, and a larger down payment will give them comfort that if the housing market dips, you won't owe more than the house is worth. My parting shot is this: If you are new in your career with no income history, be very careful about buying a property immediately, even if you get approved. A good rule of thumb is to only buy a property when you plan on living there for at least 5 years, or else you are likely to lose money overall, after factoring closing costs and maintenance fees. If you are refused a loan, that's probably a good sign that you aren't financially ready yet, but even if a bank approves you for a loan, you might not be ready yet either. You can't ask insurers to use a particular score -- they have a state-approved underwriting model that they must follow consistently. Insurance companies make money by not paying claims, and poor credit score (including limit access to credit) increases the probability that you will file a small claim. Why? If you get into a minor accident (say $750 of damage) and have a $500 deductible, you are much less likely to file a claim to get $250 if you have access to a cash or credit lines to make the repairs yourself.  If you feel that you are going to be penalized for closing credit card accounts, the solution is simple -- don't close them. Other than an event where you need to sever a relationship with a co-owner of an account (ie, you break up with your significant other, dissolve a business, etc) or avoid paying an annual fee, there is no advantage to you closing a revolving credit account, ever. If you cannot control your spending, throw the card in the shredder. Eventually, the credit card company will close your account for inactivity, which affects your credit to a lesser degree. (The big exception is if you carry sufficient balances on other cards, your credit utilization ratio goes up materially.) Hey, I was thinking back to that X-Ray you got done at the hospital, that you said was cheaper than 90% of the population. I am wondering if maybe that hospital wasn't one of the many that qualify for DSH reimbursement payments. What could have happened is that they saw that you are uninsured, and made a decision that they would only charge you for the portion that they didn't think Medicare / Medicaid would reimburse. If that happened, it wouldn't even show up on your credit report, as the hospital is the one that would file a credit claim. Likely, if they have to go through this a lot, they wouldn't even waste time filing a credit claim, they would just go after a reimbursement through Medicare / Medicaid. And thus, to you, it would just look like a very small bill, but in reality it would only represent a smaller portion of the true bill.   I would also wonder, if they do a lot of these, if they aren't also one of the hospitals that article I linked to showed was super-inflating the prices of uninsured in the hopes of getting a larger portion reimbursed. I don't have preexisting conditions. I am only speaking of how *my own personal* healthcare situation got worse because of the ACA.   I did used to use the dental and vision portions of my company-provided insurance regularly but I don't have that as part of my ACA insurance because again, it is unaffordable. If you repair your phone, when your current balance is paid off, could you get the same coverage for less money? Or would your monthly payment remain the same regardless? That would be the easiest comparison to make.  ie: Pay an extra $49 to have the phone replaced [ie: the cost of using the insurance program for $149, vs the cost of buying out your plan for $100], get a slightly worse phone instead of upgrading, but save $15 / month for the next 2 years. This would pay off economically within 3-4 months, but the phone would be older (not sure if you care about that).