Paying for medical bills not covered by insurance...

[beachlover2013]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Florida
My ex husband's daughter lives with her mother and the mother thinks she can take her to a medical facility and render services and then call him and tell him how much will be owed to the facility after the insurance and then expect him to pay her directly. We don't even know that she is paying the full amount. Don't we have the right to be able to contact the facility and work out payment for our half of the remaining balance after insurance with them directly?

 

[justalayman]

understand, there is no WE. Your husband has a right to do a lot of things. You, not so much.



anyway; he can simply refuse to give her any money. Is there some reason he has not spoken to the doctors office and ask if they will send a duplicate bill to him so he can pay his share (based on the child support order. legally, to the doctors office, he is liable for the entire bill just as the mother is)? Unless the ex wife has physically removed the phone from your husband's hand every time he attempted to call the doctors office, the ex wife has not prevented him from doing anything.

 

[beachlover2013]

understand, there is no WE. Your husband has a right to do a lot of things. You, not so much.



anyway; he can simply refuse to give her any money. Is there some reason he has not spoken to the doctors office and ask if they will send a duplicate bill to him so he can pay his share (based on the child support order. legally, to the doctors office, he is liable for the entire bill just as the mother is)? Unless the ex wife has physically removed the phone from your husband's hand every time he attempted to call the doctors office, the ex wife has not prevented him from doing anything.

Well, this woman is a piece of work. She has stolen his identity in the past. My husband had to file a police report and report it to the FCC. There is too much to tell what she has done but she doesn't give him the name of the doctor or anything until after they have went and she has supposedly paid the bill in full. Her current husband has military insurance so there is usually not anything left to pay after both insurances pay but she will just randomly call and say she took her to this doctor and it's gonna be $XX and to send her half to her checking account directly. Does she think he/we are crazy??? After all this woman has done to my husband financially and illegally like he would take her word for it. She won't even tell him the name of the doctor but she is too stupid to realize that all we have to do is look at out EOB's from our insurance. We just wanted to ask someone the question.... don't we/he have the right to contact the doctor ourselves and arrange for payment of whatever is not covered??? Her point is that she should be able to tell us what we owe and we pay her directly. I don't think so. Can't we refuse to pay it to her or just send it directly to the doctor and then if there is an overpayment because she paid it in full, then they can re-imburse her what we paid. Our point is that we don't want to deal with her directly for payments whatsoever and think we/he should have the right to be able to work out payment plans or to pay by credit card at his discretion. If we pay her directly to her checking account like she is demanding then we would always have to come up with the amount in cash and we should be given the ability to pay by credit card if we so choose the same way she can.

 

[justalayman]

if you do not know who the doctor is, how would you send them money? If you do know who the doctor is, although how you obtained it circumvented the mother's attempt to hide the info, call the doctor and speak with the financial department and see what you can arrange.


There is no obligation to pay the mother directly for anything unless it is written as such in the support order,.

 

[beachlover2013]

if you do not know who the doctor is, how would you send them money? If you do know who the doctor is, although how you obtained it circumvented the mother's attempt to hide the info, call the doctor and speak with the financial department and see what you can arrange.


There is no obligation to pay the mother directly for anything unless it is written as such in the support order,.

Understood. As I said we can look up the EOB after the fact and see the doctor's name. But by that point she has already called and said he owes her. She doesn't tell us until long after the appt. is over and our insurance company doesn't send us EOB's anymore. But what she claims is that she has personally already paid all of the amount that is not covered by insurance so now my husband has to send HER half of that and that is not fair and definitely not what the court order says. It just says that he has to pay 50% of anything not covered. So from now on when she pulls these stunts we will log on and look for an EOB, get the doctor's name, and then call them and render a payment to them whether or not she has already paid it in full or only paid her half. My husband has paid his child support on time for the past 10 years and has always carried full medical and dental on the girls. She was almost in contempt of court at their last hearing because she came in claiming that my husband owed her $3000 for the first 6 months they were divorced. He had made payments directly to her totaling $3000 and the courts had that on file as soon as a case was made with Florida back in 2003. She told the judge that he never paid that amount and when the judge said "Ms. XXX, I see a paper here that you have personally signed claiming that Mr. XX paid you that amount directly." she then said "You know what, I forgot about that....he did pay me in cash for 6 months." The judge told her he should hold her in contempt for telling a lie under oath but he didn't. That isn't even the tip of the iceberg with this woman. I thank you for you answering my question!!

 

[ecmst12]

Not your kids, not your money, not your business. Stay out of it. If the involved party has questions, he can create his own account to post them.

 

[LdiJ]

if you do not know who the doctor is, how would you send them money? If you do know who the doctor is, although how you obtained it circumvented the mother's attempt to hide the info, call the doctor and speak with the financial department and see what you can arrange.


There is no obligation to pay the mother directly for anything unless it is written as such in the support order,.

I think that is potentially dangerous advice. There are many medical providers who insist that co-pays etc., be paid in full at the time that service is provided. I also doubt that many medical providers, if any, would be willing to deal with the hassle of reimbursing one party because the other party insisted on paying the provider directly for something that had previously been paid.

It would work for things that would not be normally paid up front but some things do have to be paid up front.

 

[CSO286]

if you do not know who the doctor is, how would you send them money? If you do know who the doctor is, although how you obtained it circumvented the mother's attempt to hide the info, call the doctor and speak with the financial department and see what you can arrange.


There is no obligation to pay the mother directly for anything unless it is written as such in the support order,.

I think that is potentially dangerous advice. There are many medical providers who insist that co-pays etc., be paid in full at the time that service is provided. I also doubt that many medical providers, if any, would be willing to deal with the hassle of reimbursing one party because the other party insisted on paying the provider directly for something that had previously been paid.

It would work for things that would not be normally paid up front but some things do have to be paid up front.

What Dad has to pay and whom he has to pay SHOULD be in the court order.

If it dictates that each parent is responsible for a %age of the uncovered expenses, it should outline either a method to pay the provider, and/or how the party incurring the expense should seek reimbursement.

OP, perhaps your husband can seek out the court order and if he cares enough about his legal issue, he could come here and we could help him understand it.

 

[justalayman]

I think that is potentially dangerous advice. There are many medical providers who insist that co-pays etc., be paid in full at the time that service is provided. I also doubt that many medical providers, if any, would be willing to deal with the hassle of reimbursing one party because the other party insisted on paying the provider directly for something that had previously been paid.

It would work for things that would not be normally paid up front but some things do have to be paid up front.

Nothing dangerous about it. I said the husband doesn't have to pay anything directly to the mother unless the court order requires it. IF the mother paid an amount the father is required to pay half, that would be such that the father would be required to pay to the mother per the court order. That doesn't mean father has to pay without proof though. If the mother wants to make an issue about it, she can take it to a court. The court is almost guaranteed to require the mother show evidence of the payment for the provider.

I never suggested the doctor refunds anything to anybody. I agree. That is beyond what should be expected of the provider.

If there is this much of a problem
, it sounds like somebody needs to take this to a courtrt and ask a judge to settle the immature arguments and actions of each party.