Hello,
I want to thank everyone that has been helping with my many debt questions. I do not own any credit cards, and I never have. My debt problems are basically hospital bills. During most of these hospital visits I had health insurance. I looked at my credit report yesterday as well as the dates and I was covered by tri-care at the time. So my new question is, how do I go about contacting the insurance company about these bills? Will I need to send them a copy of my credit report to show the dates? Or should I contact the credit agency for a copy of the bill to submit to the insurance company? Since the bills we're from 2006-2007 will the insurance company still pay the portion owed(I was fully covered at that time)? Thank you in advance for your help, I hope I havn't confused anyone.
I matters on WHAT type of Tricare you had. I have tricare prime meaning if I see anyone outside of a military insulation I have to pay the WHOLE bill on my own unless I get a military doctor or Tricare itself to 1st ok me seeing a non-military doctor. This includes ER visits.
Now if you had tricare standard, then you can see anyone you want and just pay a deductible and a co-pay.
Contact the hospital billing and tell them the insurance coverage you had. If you can dig around and find your insurance # to give them that would help. They would be happy to try to get their money from Tricare.
There is a chance that the bills are the portion that was not covered by your insurance...like a deductible?
You really to need to contact the insurance company to determine that. Just search for a phone number online or on your health care card-if you still have the same coverage.
Since you have no credit card debt, you can still pay off outstanding bills using the same lowest-to-highest strategy used for credit card debt BUT you might want to save up and pay them off O. at a time.
Good luck!
Tricare denies a lot of coverage and has deductibles, so they chance is those are till owed by you.
You can call Tricare with the dates of service and they can direct you on if what percentage they paid and you owe.
I would first off contact the insurance company and then dispute it with the credit bureau if you think this shouldnt be on there.
Hi, 2boys:
Contact the hospital and ask for your itemized bills and see what the insurance paid on them.
Contact your insurance company and talk to the representative and ask questions about their responsibility for the bills.
Hope this helps.
Good luck.
D.
You may not have to actually send them anything. Just give them a call & when you do make sure you have ALL of the info ready i.e. date, place, dr./hospital, amount. When you talk to them just tell themt, "I was covered at this time but the medical bills are showing as unpaid, can you check and see if they were paid or what the problem was?"' If Tricare shows it as paid then ask if they can send/fax/email you something stating that & then send that to the credit bureus (sp?). I had something similiar with Tricare recently & they were super helpful. If you call & get someone that isn't so helpful just remember, you can always hang up & call again - the chances of you getting the same person are slim!! Hope you get it all worked out. Mucho blessings :-)
EDIT: It also depends on if you had Tricare Prime or Tricare Standard as to if you even have a deductible...they should be able to tell you everything you need to know.
I would call the hospital that treated you and get copies of the bills. They will need to have the ICD9 diagnosis codes, procedure codes and charges on them. Submit these on a claim form ( you can usually download them from the insurance co. web site) to your insurance company at that time. You will need to include the ID number of that policy as well.
Check to see if your insurance paid anything before sending in a claim. The charges on your credit card may be your co-pay and, if that is the case, the insurance company is not liable for that amount, you are.
If they initially deny your claim, call customer service and, if you don't get a satisfactory response, ask to speak to the claim reps supervisor. Ask to speak to the supervisor's supervisor if you have to. Be prepared to be on the phone for an hour, but don't give up! Good luck!
If it were me, I would call Tricare first to see if they have any record of payment or denial of claims during the time frame you're talking about. You should be able to give them that info based on the dates listed on your credit report. That will be MUCH easier than trying to get a hospital billing dept. to give you info from 4 years ago. You may be able to get the answers you need from Tricare that other moms have mentioned here (did they pay anything, is the amount you owed the amount they didn't cover, etc.). Here's the contact info page from the Tricare website:
http://www.tricare.mil/contacts/
Regardless of which Tricare plan you have, the contact info should be listed there. We still have Prime, and we have 100% coverage, even if we are seen in an ER (Tricare no longer does pre-approval for ER visits, they just tell you to go to your local ER. We have done this numerous times w/our kids over the past 5 years).
Once you know what you're dealing with regarding Tricare's payment obligations, then you can contact the credit agencies to clear up the listing on your credit report if it was made in error. If it wasn't, then you should be able to work out a payment plan with the collection agency representing the hospital. If it is in collections, I'm surprised you haven't been contacted by the collection agency, especially after this amount of time. Those things usually go into collections pretty quickly, so maybe the credit report issue is a mistake. If it is, you can submit a request online to each of the 3 credit bureaus to correct it. Good luck with it all!
