Unpaid Insurance Claims – Your Problem?

It is a known fact that most insurance companies, especially the larger ones, love to deny claims and look for any and all reasons to not pay your claims or your hospital and other medical claims. You should be aware of this and you should take certain steps to protect yourself. If you have health, life or home-owners insurance, I will bet that is was way easier to buy and pay for the policy than it was to put any kind of claim in.

Why does this happen? This happens simply because the law allows it to happen. I guess somewhere in America and across the oceans, someone needs to step in and begin changing our insurance laws so that they begin to benefit the people more than they benefit those large corporations who are making millions and sometimes billions at our expense. We are all supporting those insurance companies and no one likes it any better than you do. Here are some details about different insurance coverages and their red tape system.

For example, a family member goes to the emergency room for a serious emergency. The last thing that you are thinking of is to go to a payphone and hold on while you listen to recordings from your insurance company and hope that a human being answers the phone. For most emergency rooms encounters, you or the patient can be in the emergency room hours and even sometimes days before you all calm down and relax if that happens at all. When you think about all the emergencies that happen in our country, you know that these insurance companies are receiving thousands of claims each day and one way they stop claims is by insisting that you notify them within a certain number of hours.

Here is a way to protect yourself from being kicked out of your insurance claim right now.

Right now, write or call your insurance company and insist on their mailing address so that you can notify them in case you need to notify them that you or a family member needs to be in the hospital. If they give you a hard time, just ask for their corporate address in your city or near your city. Here is what to do ahead of time– address an envelope to your insurance company and put stamps on it. Type a letter stating that a person (leave their name blank but put a space there) has been taken to the emergency room and you are not sure yet what the admission diagnosis is. Tell them in this letter that you are notifying them because you are unable to get to a phone and this letter will serve as their pre-certification notice or notice that someone has been admitted. Place that letter, envelope into a safe spot in your home (perhaps on your desk).

Now IF an emergency happens, simply fill in your name or the name of the patient, and fill in your insurance numbers and mail it off certified or with certificate of mailing. If you do not have time to send it by waiting on line at the post office, then mail it through one of their electronic mail machines or mail it through Office Max or Staples where you will have a receipt for mailing it.

Keep all your receipts. Then at a later date when you are able to do so, you can call your insurance company and let them know that you have notified them by mail.

That is one way that you might be able to protect yourself. Even if the company does not like your idea, at least you have written, postmarked proof that you have notified the insurance company.

Other insurance red tape is all about home ownership and home ownership policies. So many times insurance companies are eager to sell a policy to you and then they are not eager to pay out your claims. Check this link for information regarding home-owner’s insurance red tape.

By Linda A. Perry

Certified television producer, artist, writer, collage-artist, and creative individual with many years photography, press and publicity experience. She has covered national and International events as an independent journalist and artist. She writes about almost every topic from apples to wildlife conservation centers and most subjects in between those. You are invited to write to her about any topic. thereallinda@live.com