A local woman says even though she has enough insurance coverage to pay her medical bills, she still gets letters demanding she send payment. Local 12 Troubleshooter Howard Ain says it all centers around the way Medicare handles supplemental insurance companies.
When it comes to health insurance coverage, Dorothy Weber of Westwood, is one of the lucky ones. She has Medicare, is retired after 33 years at Western Southern life and has health insurance from them, and has her late husband's Anthem insurance as well. But, despite all that, she still receives medical bills. "I never thought anything about it, why they would send me a bill. I would just go and pay it. I thought you owe it, pay it."
It went on that way for years till her son Larry started handling her affairs and found Medicare is not billing her secondary insurers in the correct order. "It's a computer program that Medicare has and it automatically notifies who they see or who understand is the next insurer to pay what Medicare didn't pay."
So, Medicare pays a bill and sends that information to Anthem insurance for it to pay the remainder. However, he says it should really be sent first to Western Southern insurance and then to Anthem. "It sounds sort of simple that it should just require me to write a letter or call the provider and say you must bill in the proper order and I do that numerous times but it doesn't resolve the problem."
As a result, Weber keeps getting billed. Larry says this isn't right."I have documents from Medicare showing that they notify Anthem but Anthem is not her secondary insurer there's one in between they're left out of the pot."
So Howard contacted Medicare and explained how Western Southern's health insurance should be billed first before anything is sent to Anthem. Howard is happy to report Medicare has now contacted Webber and told him his mother's records will be fixed within the next three weeks. Then bills will be sent to her secondary insurance companies, not her.
