I recently watched my mom get hundreds of dollars knocked off of medical bills because of inaccurate billing. It wouldn’t surprise me if up to a quarter of all medical bills contained errors.

So it was with interest that I read a recent post by Jen at Bohemian Revolution about a simple medical billing mistake that left her entirely responsible for a lab test that is routinely covered by insurance:

I recently had a physical. My routine bloodwork claim was completely denied by my health insurance carrier, which made me responsible for paying nearly $400. I called them to find out why, and got a surprising answer: the lab had simply used the wrong diagnostic code – if they would resubmit it with the right code, the claim would be covered (partially – I do have a deductible to meet).

Simple enough, right? Ugh, read Jen’s full account of what it took to get this bill properly coded and paid for by her health insurance company. In the end her persistence paid off and it’s a great story to remind all of us to examine our medical bills like hawks and to be persistent when we do spot inaccuracies.

Protect yourself against paying too much on health insurance claims