I just saw my credit scores plunge, thanks to St. Mary’s Medical Center of Knoxville, Tennessee. While I worked in Tennessee back in 2003, my Year of Bliss, I wound up in the hospital for a couple of days due to a pesky kidney infection. Being an hourly contractor with a crappy health plan will make one reluctant to take sick days and see the doctor. I know I didn’t pay them whatever I owed them right away. I know I made a bunch of payments to St. Mary’s a few years back; I thought I had paid off whatever I owed. I never received any collections notices.
But suddenly I find that, not only does St. Mary’s think I owe them $360, but this is being recorded as a delinquency in two of three major credit bureau reports. Oddly enough, the account is listed as having been opened in November 2007.
Now, when a bill collector wants to come after you for a payment, they need to send you some official letter, in which they tell you that you’ve got 30 days to dispute the balance. By virtue of the fact that St. Mary’s could submit this debt to the credit bureaus, they must be able to obtain my current address. But I’ve received nothing from them.
I guess I’ll try to call them tomorrow and ready dispute letters for the credit bureaus. It was something like this that probably wrecked my construction loan plans a year ago. One mis-reported item, and your FICO score is 20-50 points lower than what it should be, and you don’t get approved for something that your loan officer tells you not to worry about. And you’re left with something that Tom Hanks and Shelley Long wouldn’t touch (or Cary Grant and Myrna Loy, if you prefer).
Fun call with the St. Mary’s billing rep. Woman sounded like Kay Hagan. “Sir, I cannot help you. We no longer own the account”. \< I rant \> “Sir, you’ll have to speak to the collection agency. Have a nice day!”
I call PARC – Premium Asset Recovery Corp. The woman I speak with is very apologetic after I rant about how it is that the only address and phone number they’ve tried for me are 4 1/2 years old. It’s apparently St. Mary’s fault, since all they provided to them in November 2007 was my 4 1/2-year-old information and the last four digits of my SSN.
“It doesn’t sound like anyone has tried very hard to recover this money. Don’t you at least have to try a little harder before sticking a delinquency on my credit report?”
I settled the account for $325.
…
Isn’t it your own fault for not paying off the balance in the first place, Toastie?
Yes. I don’t remember the circumstances, but I do recall not being sure if I had paid off this hospital bill or not. But I also have a recollection of having calling St. Mary’s and asking them about it, and of them saying it had been closed. It’s probably all recorded somewhere in my filing cabinet at home.
Anyway, this is just a very unwelcome problem at a time when I’m trying to figure out how to deal with loss of pay from having used up my accrued sick time back in February and March and needing to log unpaid leave.
And my pets need dental cleanings.
My stimulate rebate is not going to be used for anything fun, for sure.
Single payer health care, anyone?
I wish sick leave were transferable between employers. I’d happily give you some of mine.
Hell, my company maxes sick leave accrual at 6 weeks. (You get 10 days a year.) If you go 4 or 5 years only taking a couple of days, as i generally do, you can put 6 weeks in the bank pretty easily. you can’t cash it out when you leave, and once you’ve got the 6 weeks, you can’t add anymore. I’ve tried to get them to start a bank, so my extra sick time could be used by someone who might really need it, but HR says that’s too difficult to install.
I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out what, as the econ boys and girls say, is the rational decision for a person in my position.
Thanks, Barry. My employer has a leave-transfer program. Unfortunately, you can only transfer vacation time to someone who has run out. And the sick person has to miss four consecutive weeks of work. I missed about three weeks spread out over about two months. If it were too easy to transfer sick days, there’d be bidding wars anytime an employee was leaving. I would’ve hit up someone whose last day was today.
I complain about what I complain about because I can…but I am relatively fortunate in terms of my current health benefits. I pay co-pays for procedures, but none of that 10% or 20% stuff, which adds up really quickly with a chronic condition.
My main gripe with the healthcare system (well, I’ve still got plenty) is that I will, as things stand presently, need to rely on an employer’s offerings for the rest of my working life. I will never be able to afford insurance on my own.