I am sorry you feel this way - Kaiser CSA response

**timosman** · 10-02-2015, 08:58 AM

Complaining to Kaiser CSA about the fact there is no single number to call in order to bring the account current results in - "I am sorry you feel this way"

They have 3 numbers instead:

Premiums - 800-403-5945
Co-payments - 800-201-2123
Deductibles - 800-390-3507

Each payment requires knowing not only your member ID but also the current internal routing number for the account listed on your bill. This means you must be holding the bill in your hand when calling. The automated payment system requires you to pad all account numbers with zeroes in order to make them 10 digits. Something too difficult for the computer to accomplish.

"I am sorry you feel this way" - am I wrong when I feel being treated as a toddler when hearing this ?

**fisharmor** · 10-02-2015, 10:06 AM

LOL try Aetna. Aetna is the devil.

We're trying to refinance the house and can't, because there's a medical debt currently in collections that we don't even recognize.

The bill originated from an office we'd never even heard of before. We demanded proof from the collectors (per FDCPA) and they sent us the insurance billing form, which didn't say much (other than that it was from the insurance company we had through my work four years ago).
So my wife (the subject of the bill) called the office and they said they used to have an affiliate in Lorton, and she actually did see a podiatrist in Lorton four years ago for an ingrown toenail (the bill is for $500... for an ingrown toenail.) But "ingrown toenail" is not anywhere on the bill or in any of the info so far.

So this may be from a legitimate visit, but seriously, $500 for a $#@!ing ingrown toenail? And you can't even put the name of the original office anywhere on this? And why did it take four years to do ANYTHING about it, and why is the first thing you're doing about it sending it to collections?

I also had Aetna send another debt to collections like six years ago, where we had like a dozen labs that they wouldn't pay for, but again, didn't say anything about it at all for two years, and then sent all 12 of them to us at once to pay. I called both the lab and Aetna to try to get some answers, and the lab couldn't give me a total of all of them like happened to you - the poor girl obviously knew it was bull$#@! because she started to calculate it all up for me.

Luckily I knew that anything under $100 is likely to be written off and not reported to the credit bureau, and I had a hunch that since they couldn't even give me a total of all the labs, it was really unlikely that someone was going to put the pieces together and figure out it was actually a thousand dollars worth of debt for one person - they were only going to see it as a bunch of disconnected debts for $70. So I ignored that one and it went away.

This toenail thing, though, I gotta go bust some heads over it.

Of course, we all know single payer is going to fix all of this, right?