Keep your insurance claims

I recently got a bill from my midwife for delivering my son 18 months ago.  I just opened it up and thought they were sending me a reminder that I needed to come in for my annual check up.  I don't generally go to those unless I see the need or I"m pregnant and I am perfectly healthy right now and not pregnant.    I opened it up expecting to see that and I see a bill that we still owe her for delivering my baby 18 months ago.   How did we miss that?

  It says that it was only 30 days late..... I was so confused.  We met my deductible last year for sure because I had quite a few medical procedures done for my skin cancer and other things.

So I call up the office and they billing lady says ahhh yes I have been expecting your call.  We found this very odd, and we were confused too.  She continued to explain it to me and how it was one of those cases that got lost in the mix.  They had to bill it differently because I had switched providers in the middle of the pregnancy due to my previous dr retiring mid pregnancy.  She asked me if I got an explanation of benefits and I said yes.  She was glad I keep them because I could go back and look and see that it did process through the insurance and it was put towards our deductible so we were good and avoided a lot of headache of calling the insurance by just saving those papers.  I am glad my parents taught me that.  I save them for a few years and then shred them.  

Turns out that we do really owe her but it was already put towards our deductible last year.  That is why we didn't end up paying too much for all of the other medical bills we had.  I am so glad for a health savings plan that we have.  We are a pretty healthy family and don't go to the dr often so we have loved using the health savings.