Posting here since I’m not sure what I can do about this, and I want to prevent others for falling for this trap. I had a procedure with Ascension Seton in January of this year, and received my bill a few weeks ago. The bill from Ascension Seton was $2,800, which was way higher than I was expecting. I decided to do my due diligence and compare to the claim on my insurance- my insurance’s EOB reported a patient responsibility of $620, $2.2k less than what Ascension charged me.
I contacted both my insurance (Cigna) and Ascension Seton through their portal. Cigna responded almost immediately and reinforced that the $620 was the correct amount that I should pay out of pocket. Surprise surprise, Ascension Seton never responded. After a week I decided to call them, and to their credit (and the credit of the customer service representative), they immediately admitted the mistake and updated the amount due on my account.
After they updated the amount, I asked the CS rep what caused the initial issue, to which she said it was the result of a cyber security attack earlier this year (note that nothing in that report mentions over-billing). I then asked: if I hadn’t compared Ascension’s bill with my EOB (both of which are extremely confusing) and caught this issue, what would have happened? Would I have just been out the $3k? The rep replied that Ascension sent out an “apology letter” about the attack. In other words, yes, I would have overpaid by $2,200, and Ascension would have done nothing about it.
I am so frustrated and disgusted by the way Ascension handled this, and I hate that medical providers can get away with shit like this, especially since I know that most people trust their providers to bill them correctly and never would have double checked the amount. Does anyone know if there’s anything I can do (other than posting here) to hopefully hold Ascension accountable for this, and prevent this from happening to others? Happy to report this to the right authorities if possible.
Similar report from someone in this subreddit a few weeks ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/1gb5sl2/shady_billing_practices_at_ascension_seton_main/?rdt=63403
tl;dr: Ascension Seton overcharged me by $2,200, and they wouldn’t have done anything about it if I hadn’t caught it and reported it myself. Please always do your due diligence and compare your bills to your insurance claim, and follow up if it doesn’t make sense to you.
submitted by /u/sevans1016
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