Submitted by beehummble t3_zf99wx in tifu
I hadn’t been to the dentist in a about a year and the soonest available appointment I could get from my last dentist is about 6 months out.
So, I call my insurance company and ask them for other dental offices in my network. The nice lady refers me to an office in my area.
I call the office and they confirm that they are in my network, accept my insurance , and have availability in the next month - perfect.
I visit them for a normal checkup they check my insurance and everything is good.
They schedule me for a follow up for a couple of fillings.
A couple weeks after I get my fillings, I get an “explanation of benefits” in the mail telling me I owe over $500 for this visit.
I call my insurance company and they tell me it looks like the office was in-network but the dentist they assigned to me when I got in was contracted out and not in-network.
TL;DR: I verified that the dental office was in network with my insurance company and with the office but I forgot to ask if the dentist at the office who was going to work with me actually worked for the office and wasn’t just contracted out.
I’m broke and basically fucked now. Fuck our entire insurance system. I plan to call them early tomorrow to talk about this with them (I get off work today when they’re about to close and don’t want to try to get help from someone who has just worked a full shift and might be less willing to help)
EDIT: I wasn’t expecting this many responses - so, I apologize if I don’t respond to your comment! I want to thank everyone for being so supportive and of your suggestions. Im going to try just giving a quick call to the dentist office tomorrow and expressing that this doesn’t seem right and that they had my insurance info and knew I was there for in-network service. Depending on how that quick call goes, I might then reach out to my insurance company to point out that they referred me to this office and ask how they can help.
EDIT 2: a number of people have pointed out that things can change in between getting an EOB and a bill. So, although the EOB was sent from my insurance company and said, word for word: “what we will pay: $51 | what you owe: $536” (making me think they were planning on sending me a bill for $536), I’ll wait until I get the actual bill before making any calls. I want to thank everyone again for being supportive and I’m sorry to hear about everyone else’s stories of dealing with similar or worse situations.
EDIT 3: I went back and forth between trying to get ahead of this issue or just waiting for the actual bill. But this morning, I decided to call the dental office, and my heart was racing as soon as I reached someone in the financial department, but I remained as dispassionate as I could and just informed them that I received an EOB telling me that my insurance company was only going to pay about $51 of the total nearly $600 bill. The lady I spoke to was very nice and asked me to send them a picture of the EOB and said she would call me back. When she called back, she told me that: 1) a mistake was made for one of the charges, and I shouldn't have been recommended a topical thing they gave me and were charging me for, 2) a comprehensive exam is needed for all new patients which include x-rays and they were willing to write off those charges, 3) for the rest of the charges, the dentist who worked with me was in the process of getting covered by my insurance company. So they were willing to honor in-network costs for that, 4) basically almost all of the costs would be written off, and she's sorry that I received this EOB telling me that I owed all of this. As soon as she told me that, I was incredibly relieved. I had been planning how I would approach this based on everyone's advice - and I'm thankful I didn't have to go through with actually taking the time to fight it. I'm sorry to hear about everyone else's stories of having to pay thousands of dollars for similar issues. I I can sometimes feel pretty cynical (especially because of some other stuff I've been dealing with recently), but the support that people were willing to offer warmed my heart (as cheesy as that sounds...).