I had ankle surgery last June. It was due to an older injury but I had re-injured it in March. At that time I had seen the podiatrist who had treated me throughout and he did absolutely nothing helpful. His attitude was pretty much "as long as you've got torn ligaments you've got torn ligaments". He didn't even notice that I'd torn tendons as well or that I'd damaged the joint lining. They did xrays and put a brace on that I already had several of and that was it.

When it was billed Medicare said that they wouldn't pay b/c it was a worker's comp claim. It absolutely wasn't. I hurt myself at my therapist's office. After some effort I got a letter saying the worker's comp claim I'd had years ago was on the other leg. And so I requested they re-bill with that. After my surgery the place I had PT prior to surgery and the hospital where my surgery was started having trouble with claims so I spent a long time trying to fight with Medicare over this. I finally got it worked out 3-4 months ago and the claims are gradually going through although some have had to be re-billed many times.

That dr's office started requiring me to make payments in September. Every month I pay $10, which doesn't sound like much but I'm on SSDI, that's a lot. I have requested they re-bill numerous times and they haven't. They did once back in the beginning but before I finally found out the box they needed to check.

I just called them to ask them personally to re-bill since letters and messages haven't worked. And they say they don't think they can re-bill after 6 months. It's not true, my hospital is still re-billing 12 months after surgery and my PT clinic just finally got their payments completed, some of which went back to last April. They are supposed to call back but I've had it.

They aren't really making much effort because in their head I can just keep paying $10/month for another year and several months and the bill is paid off. But by the time I do that I've paid them several hundred dollars that could go for very important things. And they aren't using Medicare billing costs so I'm paying much, much more than I would if Medicare were involved anyway. Medicare would have cost about $40 versus $200 or so. Now I want to smush my budget and just pay them off and never, ever go back which I'd pretty much determined with the missed torn tendons (torn since the first time he saw me).

I'm so angry at them because I've updated them repeatedly on what I've learned from Medicare. I know re-billing numerous times was a pain in the butt but it's not my fault and the truth is that since all they had to do was check a box saying it wasn't worker's comp it's kinda theirs for not knowing to do that once the worker's comp thing came up. And all my other providers have re-billed a bunch of times. This place just doesn't care and if they won't re-bill after 6 months I'm going to have a very hard time being civil. If for no other reason they could have bothered to contact me after the numerous letters and messages and tell me that it wasn't possible.

I'm so tired of this.......it used to be that $200 wasn't a big deal because I earned a decent salary. Now it is a huge deal and they don't care enough to help me.

I'm so frustrated and my mood has gone down about 10 notches since that phone call. (I ran out of gabapentin and didn't realize so I missed several days and my mood is kind of messy anyway).

I hate this whole mess. This should not be my problem. That's why insurance exists.