I hate to fetch the mail nowadays because there are so damn many importunate communications from doctors, hospitals, from medicare, and from insurance companies. Even though I'm in relatively good health and need only routine servicing, each time I visit a doctor the system manages to generate one piece of paper after another -- most of them written in codes that are almost entirely inexplicable. Could anyone have devised a more lunatic, more inefficient health-care system?
The other day I received a letter from Great-West Healthcare, my "supplemental carrier," to this effect:
"We recently reviewed one of your claims and discovered that we mistakenly sent you a benefit check for $31.80. We now realize that payment should have been sent directly to your provider. We have reprocessed the claim to pay the provider. Therefore, this letter is a request for the $31.80 paid to you in error. Please send a check for $31.80 to the address on the back of this letter. If you have any questions, please contact our service center at the number on the front of your health plan ID card. Thank you.
Of course, there was no address on the back of the letter, so I could not respond.
But if there had been an address, this is what I would have said:
Dear Great-West Healthcare:
Thank you for you letter of August 10. I will be happy to refund the $31.80. However, I have no record of this transaction, so before I pay you, I need the following data.
A copy of a cancelled check for the amount that you claim to have sent me.
Evidence that you have actually paid the funds to the unnamed "provider." This evidence should be in the form of a cancelled check but if the $31.80 was sent as an electronic deposit, a notarized affidavit from an officer of the "provider" will be ample.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call me at my home phone number, which can be conveniently found in the local telephone book or obtained online, so that I can play you some nice elevator music while you languish on indefinite hold.
Thank you. Your call is important to us.
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