Also, take this with a grain of salt — if they choose to take it before a judge instead of settling, I’m not sure how a judge would see it.

I am also in the midst of dealing with a First Colonies, and have had suit filed by Mr. Thaler. This is particularly frustrating because in good faith, I paid the “in network” amount ($410), already. Am I correct in undestanding that they settled your account for payment of the in network amount?

In my case, I feel like the problems I had with First Colonies were primarily the result of a problem internal to the billing department — phone calls would net me one set of answers (“Talk to your insurance company” or “We’ll make provisions for people whose insurance company was not under contract”) and the bills for the full amount of the work performed kept coming to my address.

I do agree that Care First PPO was also a significant part of the problem… but I’m probably not a poster child for this scenario, where the big, bad health care organization leaves the consumer trapped in medical billing purgatory.

I also agree that it just plain “sucks” that a health care organization would not shield a patient from the complexities and headaches involved in resolving a medical billing issue — but when a “simple” surgery requires over thirty pages of bills from a half dozen parties, it already seems that things have spiraled out of control.

The other issue here is that any legislation that is passed would probably leave consumers at even more of a disadvantage if the health care providers and doctors can’t agree on a fair price, and the consumer is trapped by a pile of contracts that still pin the responsibility for paying the doctors on them.

Personally, I’ve always thought it was ridiculous that a person who is experiencing a trauma in an ER, or a person who is going in for surgery, has to sign a legally binding contract in order to receive care. In ERs every day, we have this absurd scenario where people bleeding all over the place while having to sign contracts in the waiting room. Would a car purchase under the same circumstances be legally binding?

Consumers lack a lobbying firm to fight for them — so this is really a battle between doctors and health care companies. And I think this can be extended to also include the insurers who provide malpractice insurance, and the lawyers who bring cases against doctors in malpractice suits. All of these parties have vested interests in getting their piece of the pie, but tell me, who really cares about the patient?

P.S., One interesting point — I notice that if I search on “First Colonies Anesthesiology”, my blog comes up first. Is the only recourse for the consumer with a problem with companies like Care First PPO and First Colonies to basically hope that Google and Yahoo! make their plight public?

It sucks for us too! As a member of First Colonies Anesthesia I would like nothing better than to be paid fair compensation in a timely fashion by the insurance companies however they often refuse to do so. When we try to negotiate with them they refuse to come to the table or use patients as pawns to try to force us to sign contracts that are not advantageous for us. We are currently sponsoring legislation that would prevent insurers from involving patients in negotiations and payment disputes. Would you be interested in sharing your experiences with legislators to help us illustrate the aggravation and confusion brought about by the insurers handling of non-participating providers? I look forward to hearing from you.

Jeremy