Updated: 4/5/2006; 9:04:47 PM.
Mondegreen
Erik Neu's weblog. Focus on current news and political topics, and general-interest Information Technology topics. Some specific topics of interest: Words & Language, everyday economics, requirements engineering, extreme programming, Minnesota, bicycling, refactoring, traffic planning & analysis, Miles Davis, software useability, weblogs, nature vs. nurture, antibiotics, Social Security, tax policy, school choice, student tracking by ability, twins, short-track speed skating, table tennis, great sports stories, PBS, NPR, web search strategies, mortgage industry, mortgage-backed securities, MBTI, Myers-Briggs, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, RPI, Phi Sigma Kappa, digital video, nurtured heart.
        

Saturday, March 04, 2006
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This year, my employer offered, for the first time, a combination high-deductible/HSA insurance option. To induce people to try it, they offered a one-time sweetener. I crunched the numbers, and determined that I couldn't lose: if I under-spent the limit, I was money ahead; if I came out on the nose, it was break-even; and if I exceeded the limit, I was ahead (because I wouldn't have co-pays). So we signed up.

The part I was concerned about was the paperwork. They offer this "crossover account" thingy, whereby you automatically get your reimbursement check as soon as the EOB hits. That's good. But then you have to pay the provider, when they send you their bill. That's seems okay, because you have already received the reimbursement.

Here's my fear: double-billing. If the provider double-bills Blue Cross, Blue Cross will notice, and reject the second bill. But will I notice? I have put together a workflow to help ensure I do, but what a pain.

And sure enough, I have my first case of double-billing. I paid, by mail, on 2/18. Two weeks later, I received another bill, dated 2/28. So unless the U.S. mail was doing very poorly, the excuse was not that they crossed in the mail. It was presumably that the latency of their payment processing resulted in a second bill being sent out.

So the next question is, what if I had not noticed, and paid a second time? Probably they would have noticed, and cut me a check for credit. But you never know...


10:56:39 PM    comment []

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