Responsibility For An Old Bill From A Closed Medical Office

[jhn_wane]

My wife had a car accident and visited a Chiropractor Office for 3 days. Since than, we have never heard from them, because they closed down the office for some reasons .Two years later, prior to statue of limitation passed in California, my car insurance adjuster did search and contact this provider to give us with all medical bills so we can all pay them, and we paid doctor visit bill and x-ray reading bill in full.
Now almost 4 years later, we got another bill from a collector agency demanding that we still owed x-ray bill with interest. We have never seen this bill before, and did contact our insurance to look into this matter. They denied this claim because of statue of limitation has passed in California. The collection agency threaded to take us to court and rune our credit. Are we still responsible for this billing that we never seen before?

[usedbranflakes]

You are responsible for the bill regardless of who was supposed to pay it. The bill is between you and your medical provider. If the insurance company has an agreement with the provider to adjust off anything beyond the reasonable and customary charges then you have to involve them. If they paid it, involve them and get a copy of the payment. If they refuse to pay it because it was not billed in a timely manner, unfortunately, you are liable for the charges.

You can always send a letter disputing it (certified mail, please) to the collection agency. After that you can refuse to work with the agency and only work with the original creditor. They will either return it (and drop it off your credit report from their agency) or notify you that they are pursuing legal actions. ...and if it gets listed with another agency, then it's another strike on your credit. In addition the agency may run a small inquiry on your credit, a Y or Z will show up which indicates to lenders that a collection agency pulled your credit for whatever reason.

A single collection is not going to ruin your credit, but will take it down 50 points or so. If you have an 850 (perfect credit), you are still in the 800-850 band, which is about as good as it gets. Damage it, yes. That is why collection agencies report to credit reporting companies.

The original creditor likely has an agreement with the collection agency that they will not pull it back once submitted.

[jhn_wane]

Thank you so much for your advice. It means a lot to us to understand this rule.
The charge is unreasonable (3 x-ray for $850) from another lab where we don’t even know about. Perhaps, it is best for us to negotiate with the collection agency to pay this bill right? And if we do so to pay this bill, how could we assure that there will not be another bill coming to us in the next few years from now, and how do we do to make sure our credit is clean from this matter?