Insurance company sent me huge check instead of pharmacy. Now what?
The insurance company issued the check.  I'd contact the insurance company to have the current check voided and a new one issued to the pharmacy. Checks are awesome things in that, even if it gets lost the money doesn't change hands until the check is cashed. I would highly recommend NOT signing a check over and putting it in the mail though. Essentially putting your signature on it is saying yes, pay to whomever. Theoretically acceptable, rarely a good idea. Call the insurance company and have them cancel current check to reissue to the correct people. Don't forget to write VOID (in huge letters) on the check before throwing away and/or tearing it up. Option 4: Go talk with someone in person at an office of the Insurance company. They have helped me several times with things like this. They can get everyone involved on a conference call and make something happen. But you have to go in. Calling is a good way to waste time and get nowhere, they will throw the issue back and forth. Find an office and go. This is the most effective solution. So: What you do: Deposit check and send a personal check (resulting in tax and IRS reporting issues) That's a bad idea, unless maybe the check you're receiving is a certified bank draft. Suppose the insurance company are crooks and the check is fraudulent. It could take weeks or months for some investigation to catch up to that, long after your own personal check was cashed by the pharmacy. The bank will then put you on hook for the 20 grand by reversing the check, even though the funds had been deposited into your account. Do not put yourself into the position of a money handler; you don't have the cash base, insurance, government protection and whatever else that a bank has. And, of course, you're being a free money handler if you do that. (You're not even compensated for postage, time and whatnot). If you're handling money between two parties, you should collect a percentage, or else refuse. That percentage has to be in proportion to the risk, since cashing a check for someone carries a risk similar to (and is effectively a form of) making a loan. In one of your comments you say: Even if the pharmacy is not in the insurance provider network? This is why you got the check instead of your insurance company. I have Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and recently my wife underwent a procedure in the hospital, where one of the physicians involved was not in my providers network. I got a letter from the physicians office stating that since they are out of network, the standard practice was for BCBS to issue the check to me, rather than to the provider. I received the check and made the payment. The main contention is the difference in price, and that is what you need to discuss with both the pharmacy (actual billing) and your insurance company (paid benefits). You mentioned depositing the check and then sending a personal check. Be sure to account for time, since any deposit over $10,000 the money will be made available in increments, so it may take 10-14 days to get the full amount in your account before you could send a personal check. I would not recommend this option regardless, but if you do, just a heads up. "This is not a mistake. This is done for ""Out of Network"" providers, and mainly when the patient is an Anthem member, be it Blue Shield or Blue Cross. Even though an ""Assignment of Benefits"" is completed by the patient, and all fields on the claim from (CMS1500 or UB04) are completed assigning the benefits to the provider, Anthem has placed in their policy that the Assignment of Benefits the patient signs is null and void.  No other carrier that I have come across conducts business in this manner. Is it smart? Absolutely not! They have now consumed their member's time in trying to figure out which provider the check is actually for, the member now is responsible for forwarding the payment, or the patient spends the check thinking Anthem made a mistake on their monthly premium at some point (odds are slim) and is now in debt thousands of dollars because they don't check with Anthem.  It creates a huge mess for providers, not only have we chased Anthem for payment, but now we have to chase the patient and 50% of the time, never see the payment in our office. It creates more phone calls to Anthem, but what do they care, they are paying pennies on the dollar for their representatives in the Philippines to read from a script.  Anthem is the second largest insurance carrier in the US. Their profit was over 800 million dollars within 3 months. The way they see it, we issued payment, so stop calling us. It's amazing how they can accept a CMS1500, but not follow the guidelines associated with it.  Your best bet, and what we suggest to patients, either deposit the check and write your a personal check or endorse and forward. I personally would deposit the check and write a personal check for tracking purposes; however, keep in mind that in the future, you may depend on your bank statements for proof of income (e.g. Social Security) and imagine the work having to explain, and prove, a $20,000 deposit and withdraw within the same month."
&gt; If the buyside was showing demand, what's wrong with HFT for reacting with supply?  In my example, HFT isn't actually adding supply/liquidity.  They're just grabbing it and flipping it.  &gt; The example you gave is akin to me going from car dealership to car dealership yelling loudly about what car I want and the price I'd like it at - would you be upset if someone heard you and decided to sell their car to you later down the line?   Not the same.  The equivalent would be me yelling about wanting to buy a Porsche 911, and you buying them all before I can finish my own purchase, then offering to resell them to me at a higher price.  &gt;In this case, the buy side trader is being stupid.   Maybe - certainly if all this could be eliminated by avoiding market orders.  This is a major critique many people have with Brad K. Instead of serially going from exchange to exchange, he could have sent orders to all exchanges at the same time (parallel!) and likely received much better prices.   He did do this at his time at RBC - sent orders to all exchanges at once.  The result would be apparently liquidity (asks at the market) disappearing and his orders getting filled at higher prices.  &gt;In my opinion, the HFT player here is simply facilitating price discovery by reacting to demand - as a market maker that's his job.  I think that's a misinterpretation of what these particular HFTs are doing.  &gt;Here's a good article. Let me know what you think.  Interesting.  It certainly goes against a lot of what Lewis wrote.  And I suppose that's the problem... very few of us are actually qualified to say what is actually true.  I know little about market structure and, as I said, have no involvement in high liquidity stocks.  The fund managers next door to me also trade pretty illiquid stuff that I strongly doubt any HFT ever touches, and they're value investors anyway, not arb HFs or something. It bothers me how your being downvoted in a goddamn business sub. Like I get people like Tesla and think it's going to be a good company but as of right now this company doesn't make money and isn't that the whole point of a business? Sure it might have huge and amazing potential but that's all it is: potential. I like Tesla as much as the next guy. I'm kicking myself for not buying the stock when I first saw it mentioned on Reddit and I considered buying it. That was at like $70.   But there is a simple fact that the company may be overvalued. It's valued like a tech company when it's currently operating like a car company. Sure you can argue they are really a tech company or will be in the future when/if they dominate the battery market but then that means news like this shouldn't even make a dent on their price.   You gave your simple and valid reasons for why you wouldn't buy Tesla. But obviously people don't want to hear it and will downvote it instead of actually making a discussion from it.    Sometimes I think that Elons marketing team has Reddit completely figured out and is just abusing it. "I've had a mortgage changing hands with mid size companies for many years with no problems.  I've handled many complex financial and technical transactions with multiple parties with no problems over the course decades. Then, after my last refinance, my mortgage fell into the hands of JP Morgan Chase. The bank sent one letter to let me know of the transfer, and in the next week they sent my loan to collections for what I later found to be Chase's process error in the transfer.   For the next three months, I ended up in customer service hell as one Chase group threatened to foreclose on my house while another group told me to ignore the imminent foreclosure notices. One started to ""investigate"" the transfer while the collections group tried to make me pay my mortgage payment twice.  The mess only ended up being taken care of after I tracked down the old owner of my loan and had them refund the ""lost"" payment directly to me - normally they would have sent it to the company buying the loan, but could not get Chase to accept the payment. Then I paid Chase that exact same mortgage payment.    All the time the Chase internal investigations and collections department were completely incapable of a simple call to previous holder of the loan. A company handling millions of mortgage transactions is somehow incapable of handling a minor glitch in a mortgage transfer? It's either utter incompetence or total malice in picking up extra penalty fees or maybe an occasional forclosure if homeowners didn't say on top of the details. This is what we used our collective tax dollars to bail out." I had a client that BoA forced escrows, and then forgot to pay their insurance company, and during the period the client's policy lapsed. While the policy was lapsed, a tree fell on the roof during a storm creating a huge hole. When they contacted their insurance, they were of course told the policy was cancelled for non payment. When they contacted BoA they admitted to their mistake and apologized, but accepted no responsibility in helping the homeowner with repairs. Instead, they gave them back the 2 months of escrows, and stopped collecting escrows for insurance and taxes all together.  My client spent all the money they were reimbursed, and had saved up fixing their roof, and couldn't make payments that following month. BoA threw their hands up and said oh well, not our problem. They explained why they weren't able or prepared to pay them on time, and eventually ended up falling 3 months behind, when BoA decided to foreclose on them.  Being average consumers that didn't know their rights, they lost their home, but have now filed suit. One could only hope the court awards these people maximum damages. BoA needs to be taken down, and has no business being in existence after all they have done to the consumers. From medicaid.gov: Although pharmacy coverage is an optional benefit under federal Medicaid law, all States currently provide coverage for outpatient prescription drugs to all categorically eligible individuals and most other enrollees within their Medicaid programs. This is related to the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program, which offsets the Federal and State costs of most outpatient prescription drugs dispensed to Medicaid patients. Approximately 600 drug manufacturers currently participate in this program. All fifty States and the District of Columbia cover prescription drugs under the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program I can't give you any specific details about patient assistance programs, but rxaccess.sd.gov links to information about various patient assistance programs and general information about Medicaid's and Medicare's prescription drug offerings. It's conceivable that you may be eligible for a patient assistance program but not Medicaid (for all I know, the reverse may be true) but it's difficult to tell without contacting the specific company. Some patient assistance programs only apply to generic versions of the drug, while some state Medicaid programs will pay for brand names. Obviously this varies from state to state. Look up escheatment. Companies that have unclaimed property are supposed to send it to your State government. They should have a unclaimed property department of some sort. In short, the company is going to have to pay either you, or your State (In Your Name) so they have to pay it either way. It would be easier for them to just give you new check. Expect them to give you some grief in verifying it has not been cashed and such... but if you have the original, in hand, it shouldn't be too bad. A 'Lost' check may be harder to get replaced. Not a lawyer, don't want to be. Sometimes I think a question like this is one of moral versus legal.  The reality is that you know you owe the money because you received the services.  You're right that the bill should have been sent to you, and the natural urge for many people is to just count it in the win column when things like this happen and there's the chance to avoid paying. I suppose my question for you is, are you comfortable with the notion that you are not paying something that your heart of hearts tells you should be paid?  If roles were reversed and you, as a business owner, had forgotten to bill something for which you were rightfully due payment, wouldn't you hope they'd have the integrity to pay you anyway? The legal side of this can be a bit trickier, and much depends on the state you're in (assuming you're in the U.S.) because some have stiffer consumer collection and protection laws than others.  The rehab center could, when doing an audit of its accounts, discover that you didn't pay for these.  They could take the polite course of action and call you with a gentle reminder or send a bill, or they could be not so nice about it.  Either way, they can't send anything to collections for which you haven't been presented a bill and demonstrated an unwillingness to pay.  There's a process in place, regardless of the state, so they can't just automatically put it into collections. I will close with this question for you: did the rehab center help you with what you needed, and are you healthier and better because of their care?  If so, pay the bill.  That's my advice.  Keep in mind that unpaid medical costs just raise the prices for everyone else, because these providers will make up for the loss somewhere. I hope this helps. Good luck! There's no reason for a chargeback, and you might get charged a fee for invalid chargeback or even sued by the insurance company. You need to always read the contract and see what the auto-renew policy is and what the local law on the issue is. It might be that you in fact approved that charge. In any case, since they agreed to refund, and within a reasonable period of time, your chargeback will be invalid. It is likely that by the time the chargeback is even processed by the bank, the refund will be there already.