I’m the executor for my late mother’s estate. Last week I thought I had completed all of my duties. I had liquidated all of my mother’s assets over the course of the past year, and then the final step was calculating the distribution of money, which was reviewed by our lawyer; that final summary was sent to all of the heirs, giving them an opportunity to dispute anything, and they then signed a form and sent it back to the lawyer. I wrote a whole bunch of checks and sent those to the lawyer.
Yesterday was the day the lawyer had received all of the signatures, all dutifully signed, had all of the pre-signed checks, and was going to pop them in the mail, and we’d be all done.
And then…another bill from an insurance company for my mother’s last days in the hospital arrived, for unspecified in-patient treatments, for $770. This was a year ago! The lawyer had posted a public notice last year telling all creditors that this was their last chance to get their final bite of the pie. It took a year to complete the accounting because these bills and claims had trickled in for months.
We thought we were clear. There was a 4 month cut off on claims, but it turns out there’s a medical exemption.
So today I get to recalculate everything with new final sum and rewrite all of those checks and send them to the lawyer. Oh boy.
You’ll never guess who the belated bill that messed up the completion of this chore came from: United Healthcare.
What, specifically, was that bill for? And why would an insurance company, not a care provider, send you a bill for medical expenses? This sound fishy to me, even before I got to the “United Healthcare” bit.
Clearly assassinating the head flunky was the solution. Oh wait, it wasn’t!! Gosh what an unexpected twist.
Our local regional medical center stopped accepting United Healthcare Medicare Advantage plans two years ago.
They weren’t paying for a lot of medical care and the hospital was already running in the red, not a huge annual loss but it was only going to get worse.
It is a nonprofit so they had to do something.
The bill is not specific. “Inpatient expenses,” that’s it.
We’re paying it because we don’t want to see this year-long ordeal extended any further.
My wife was the executrix for her late aunt’s estate. There was over three hundred thousand dollars in IRAs that went directly to her aunt’s sister in Canada. This money could not be used for anything, it could only go to the beneficiary (her aunt’s sister in Canada). There were several small incomes from multiple sources, nothing greater than $3000. There was the house which had to be sold, the money was needed to pay off several small debts and the remaining would be divvied among her aunts (3) nieces and nephews in Canada. All this was done, but we sat on the bank account for over a year and a half. We were waiting for any surprises like PZ just encountered. We were waiting mainly because “The Canadians” did not seem pleased my wife was the executrix, they kept hinting she was playing with the numbers. We told them we are doing exactly what the lawyer and accountant are telling us, nothing else. We finally closed the estate account; it was twenty months after the last check cleared. About two months later my wife received a check for $63 payable to the closed account. She went to the bank, they looked up the account and gave her the $63 dollars in cash. We were a bit surprised.
Perhaps you could hire Luigi Mangione as a consultant.
Dear PZ, you have worked so long and hard to wrap this up. I’m sure that this bureaucratic hassle has not helped you through your grieving for the loss of your mother. United Healthcare is a huge fraudulent corporation that doesn’t care who they hurt or kill.
I hope this is the final step in this process so you can get on with your life. You have my sincere condolences on the loss of your mother and my best wishes to you. You need to take care of those knees.
While I applaud your honesty in taking the trouble to pay the $770 and recalculate the division of your mother’s estate, I do wonder if UHC would have bothered to pursue $770 if you simply ignored the bill, or responded that the estate was settled and no longer existed. Otherwise, this is a case in which a call to your state legislative rep could be useful — I write as a cardiologist who sees this problem for patients more frequently than you might imagine; even United Healthcare understands the damage that bad publicity can do to them, especially when state regulators raise questions about billing practices.
You’d think these “inpatient expenses” would be itemized. But, $700 is not enough money to fight them over. The time and effort alone would quickly cost you more than that. Yeah, cut your losses and move on.
If you were my client, I’d have told you to throw that bill in the trash. Unless there’s a statutory provision that allows the creditor to hold an executor personally responsible, they have no recourse. And even if there is, they would be highly unlikely to spend the money to pursue it.
Sounds like United’s last chance to exploit your mother’s passing for money. $700 is a pittance to them, but a sizable amount to the bereaved. Damn them.
I understand your desire to get it all out of the way, but this bill sounds like a ripoff. And I also suspect UHC knows they’re taking advantage of your desire to resolve such matters quickly.
@12 Raging Bee – I believe there is a law that states you must receive an itemized bill. I too also wondered if they found out about the deceased and relied on the estate wanting to resolve all matters expeditiously (and not challenge a small medical bill). The elderly have tremendous medical costs at the end of their life cycle making it easy for an executor/trix to overlook said bills.
One medical provider tried to balance-bill my mom after she’d died (and the bill was for hospital care on the day she died). Medicare said they’d already paid that claim, so I sent them the receipts and told them to eff off. Then they hired a collection agency to come after me/the estate for the same amount. Same response from me. Then they found ANOTHER collection agency to come after me, and got the same response from me. Nothing from them since.
PZ, DO NOT pay that bill unless/until you’re absolutely sure what the charges are for, the date(s) of service, and whether the claim is valid. As reflectory @10 said, they’re not likely to press if they see you questioning or disputing the charges.
I don’t even think it was United Healthcare. I think the thieves chose to do scams on folks covered by UHC because UHC is now publicly known to be shitty. If they had specified just what it is on the bill then you’d be able to talk to someone about it, and reveal their scam.
I would join the chorus about executors not responsible for this kind of error and also fake bills are not owed. Too late now.