Furious

I am so livid. My cell phone doesn’t normally ring unless it is my parents or my husband. I don’t spend a lot of time on it but when a number I don’t know calls I usually don’t answer as 99% of the time it is a wrong number and they realize this once they get my voicemail. Well, last night while I was with my mom a local number called but I decided not to answer. They didn’t leave a voicemail so I assumed it was a wrong number. Well, I’m sitting at my desk this morning and the same number pops up. I decided this time to answer. And it was Northside Hospital where I had my surgery at demanding a payment right then and there. Well, it was only last week that I received my final total of what I owe. $600 out of $16,000. Not bad but right now we don’t have that money laying around and I had planned on calling them to set up a payment plan after we got back from our mini vacation this weekend. I questioned the lady why she was calling me and harassing me for a payment a week after I received the invoice and her response was that the amount was due and asked if I’d be paying by check or credit card. I explained to her neither at the moment. She then asked me when I’d be putting a check in the mail. I told her twice I was at work and would not talk about this further. I eventually had to hang up on her as she wouldn’t listen to a thing I was telling her.

I’m so mad that they are harassing me already! Out of all our medical bills the past year NO ONE and I mean NO ONE has called and harassed us for payment.

If they would have called and started the conversation out with explaining to me what I owe and asked me if I have $600 laying around and if not did I want to set-up a payment plan I would have talked to her but she was so rude with her approach I didn’t even want to talk to her.

I wanted to scream at the lady that you’re harassing me for money to pay for taking out my baby and taking my fallopian tube and to have respect for the people you’re calling. I’m not several months behind in paying them. I don’t have a non-payment history with this hospital. I never said I wouldn’t pay them. I also wanted to ask if it ever occurred to NSH that the first phone call should be a nice phone call and then if I haven’t paid after that you can then get more stern about asking for a payment?

I’ve always paid my bills. I’m never late. So this angers me to no end.