No limit to creativity in New York

[Judge Roy Bean]

I don't really know how this slipped under the radar over the years, but maybe someone in the NY realm has more insight.

http://online.wsj.com/article/AP85c96bf ... 0b484.html

Of note - it took over three years to bring this to an end.

Does anyone really still wonder why a typical consumer has little or no confidence in being protected from these kinds of predators?

Their victims won't see a dime.

That's why these things keep going.

[Famspear]

Just tonight, one of the local TV stations here in Houston did an expose on a well-known hospital in the Texas Medical Center here which has been billing people who went to the emergency room at the hospital who were never actually seen by a doctor or nurse, and who left the hospital without receiving any services. One guy allegedly waited six hours in the emergency room and was never seen, so he left. But because he had given his personal information to the receptionist, he was billed over a hundred dollars.

When confronted by a reporter from the TV station, the CFO of the hospital of course said it was all a misunderstanding.

In the past few months I have received a couple of erroneous bills -- one from the business office of a physician whom I've only recently been seeing. Again, when confronted, the business manager says, "Oh, we're having problems with our billing system, just ignore it."

Just the other day I received a bill from a laboratory for something I most definitely paid in full while I was at the lab.

A few years ago I had a routine blood test at a local hospital. I got a bill for about a thousand dollars, for a test that was normally about a hundred or so. Again, when I confronted the lab about it, they immediately backed off and said, "just ignore it." The fact that they do this without even bothering to check their records is, well, bothersome.

Some of this might be just innocent incompetence, but some of it doesn't pass the smell test. It seems to happen a lot in the health services area.