Insurance company sent me huge check instead of pharmacy. Now what?
The insurance company issued the check.  I'd contact the insurance company to have the current check voided and a new one issued to the pharmacy. Checks are awesome things in that, even if it gets lost the money doesn't change hands until the check is cashed. I would highly recommend NOT signing a check over and putting it in the mail though. Essentially putting your signature on it is saying yes, pay to whomever. Theoretically acceptable, rarely a good idea. Call the insurance company and have them cancel current check to reissue to the correct people. Don't forget to write VOID (in huge letters) on the check before throwing away and/or tearing it up. Option 4: Go talk with someone in person at an office of the Insurance company. They have helped me several times with things like this. They can get everyone involved on a conference call and make something happen. But you have to go in. Calling is a good way to waste time and get nowhere, they will throw the issue back and forth. Find an office and go. This is the most effective solution. So: What you do: Deposit check and send a personal check (resulting in tax and IRS reporting issues) That's a bad idea, unless maybe the check you're receiving is a certified bank draft. Suppose the insurance company are crooks and the check is fraudulent. It could take weeks or months for some investigation to catch up to that, long after your own personal check was cashed by the pharmacy. The bank will then put you on hook for the 20 grand by reversing the check, even though the funds had been deposited into your account. Do not put yourself into the position of a money handler; you don't have the cash base, insurance, government protection and whatever else that a bank has. And, of course, you're being a free money handler if you do that. (You're not even compensated for postage, time and whatnot). If you're handling money between two parties, you should collect a percentage, or else refuse. That percentage has to be in proportion to the risk, since cashing a check for someone carries a risk similar to (and is effectively a form of) making a loan. In one of your comments you say: Even if the pharmacy is not in the insurance provider network? This is why you got the check instead of your insurance company. I have Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and recently my wife underwent a procedure in the hospital, where one of the physicians involved was not in my providers network. I got a letter from the physicians office stating that since they are out of network, the standard practice was for BCBS to issue the check to me, rather than to the provider. I received the check and made the payment. The main contention is the difference in price, and that is what you need to discuss with both the pharmacy (actual billing) and your insurance company (paid benefits). You mentioned depositing the check and then sending a personal check. Be sure to account for time, since any deposit over $10,000 the money will be made available in increments, so it may take 10-14 days to get the full amount in your account before you could send a personal check. I would not recommend this option regardless, but if you do, just a heads up. "This is not a mistake. This is done for ""Out of Network"" providers, and mainly when the patient is an Anthem member, be it Blue Shield or Blue Cross. Even though an ""Assignment of Benefits"" is completed by the patient, and all fields on the claim from (CMS1500 or UB04) are completed assigning the benefits to the provider, Anthem has placed in their policy that the Assignment of Benefits the patient signs is null and void.  No other carrier that I have come across conducts business in this manner. Is it smart? Absolutely not! They have now consumed their member's time in trying to figure out which provider the check is actually for, the member now is responsible for forwarding the payment, or the patient spends the check thinking Anthem made a mistake on their monthly premium at some point (odds are slim) and is now in debt thousands of dollars because they don't check with Anthem.  It creates a huge mess for providers, not only have we chased Anthem for payment, but now we have to chase the patient and 50% of the time, never see the payment in our office. It creates more phone calls to Anthem, but what do they care, they are paying pennies on the dollar for their representatives in the Philippines to read from a script.  Anthem is the second largest insurance carrier in the US. Their profit was over 800 million dollars within 3 months. The way they see it, we issued payment, so stop calling us. It's amazing how they can accept a CMS1500, but not follow the guidelines associated with it.  Your best bet, and what we suggest to patients, either deposit the check and write your a personal check or endorse and forward. I personally would deposit the check and write a personal check for tracking purposes; however, keep in mind that in the future, you may depend on your bank statements for proof of income (e.g. Social Security) and imagine the work having to explain, and prove, a $20,000 deposit and withdraw within the same month."
If the hospital is run like hospitals in the US it can take a long time just to determine the bill. The hospital, Emergency room, ER doctors, surgeons, anesthesiologists, X-Ray department, pharmacy and laboratory are considered separate billing centers. It  can take a while to determine the charges for each section. Is there an insurance company involved? When there is one involved it can take weeks or months before the hospital determines what the individual owes. The co-pays, coverages, and limits can be very confusing. In my experience it can take a few months before the final amount is known. You may want to call the hospital to determine the status of the bills. "check the DATE OF SERVICE on all your invoices carefully.  It's possible you actually DID pay already. Sometimes when a medical provider gets ""mostly"" paid by a third party insurer, they just drop the (small) remainder, as it's more cost than it's worth if it is a trivial amount.  Alternatively, they wait until you show up for another office visit, and ""ding"" you then!" "This is really unfortunate.  In general you can't back date individual policies.  You could have (if it was available to you) elected to extend your employer's coverage via COBRA for the month of May, and possibly June depending on when your application was submitted, then let the individual coverage take over when it became effective.   Groups have some latitude to retroactively cover and terminate employees but that's not an option in the world of individual coverage, the carriers are very strict about submission deadlines for specific effective dates.  This is one of the very few ways that carriers are able to say ""no"" within the bounds of the ACA.  You submit an application, you are assigned an effective date based on the date your application was received and subsequently approved.  It has nothing to do with how much money you send them or whether or not you told them to back date your application. If someone at the New York exchange told you you could have a retroactive effective date they shouldn't have. Many providers have financial hardship programs.  You should talk to the ER hospital and see what might be available to you.  The insurer is likely out of the equation though if the dates of service occurred before your policy was effective. Regarding your 6th paragraph regarding having paid the premium.  In this day and age carriers can only say ""no"" via administrative means.  They set extremely rigid effective dates based on your application date.  They will absolutely cancel you if you miss a payment.  If you get money to them but it was after the grace period date (even by one minute) they will not reinstate you.  If you're cancelled you must submit a new application which will create a new coverage gap.  You pay a few hundred dollars each month to insure infinity risk, you absolutely have to cover your administrative bases because it's the only way a carrier can say ""no"" anymore so they cling to it." You seem overly fixated on dead tree documentation of purchases.  They are deducting this from your account monthly - the mere fact that the money was taken is enough to prove in court that they have you on their books and to hold them to paying out said insurance.  The email copies is actually a better way to organize receipts in most cases (can't be destroyed as easily, etc.) You can cancel the insurance - but don't just stop paying (you'd owe them money then).  I foresee increasing difficulty navigating the 21st century for you unless you can get past this concern about physical receipts.  I doubt other companies would do much better. FWIW, I live in the continental US.  I don't know how different the Philippines is with regard to moving everything to digital You didn't buy it. Your mother did. You can try to cancel it if it was purchased in your name; if your mother purchased it she would have to cancel it. Either way, the company has done it's part by carrying you until that cancellation and you have no grounds for demanding a refund for time already covered. If your mother was spending your money, that is something you need to take up with her unless you want to bring charges against her for theft/fraud. If she was spending her own money, then you may want to talk to a lawyer about getting her declared incompetent so someone else can control her spending. But the money paid is probably gone. It isn't the insurance company's fault that you didn't want it doesn't, and if you don't bring charges you can't complain about their having accepted stolen money. Even if you do bring charges and win, it isn't clear you can get a refund. If you really want to pursue any of this, your next step is to talk to a lawyer. "There's nothing you can do. If he has indeed deposited the check, it would appear on your account fairly quickly - I've never seen it taking more than 2-3 business days. However, a check is a debt instrument, and you cannot close the account until it clears, or until the ""unclaimed property"" laws of your state kick in. If he claims that he deposited the check, ask it in writing and have your bank (or the bank where it was deposited) investigate why it takes so long to clear. If he's not willing to give it to you in writing - he's likely not deposited it. Whatever the reason may be, even just to cause you nuisance. Lesson learned. Next time - cashier's check with a signed receipt. Re closing the LLC: if you're the only two partners - you can just withdraw yourself from the LLC, take out your share, and drop it on him leaving him the only partner. Check with your local attorney for details." It's an over crowded boat I'm sure. She hasn't had insurance all year either. She switched departments at the end of last year and they said she had to wait for open enrollment to come around again. So it wasn't by choice that she's been uninsured. It really baffles me that her company, a healthcare provider, would let their employees go through this. No you do not insure the cheque. A cheque is just standardized form that instructs a bank to transfer money. It is no more important than an ordinary letter.  A cheque carries no commercial value, especially when it has a designated recipient. No mail insurance will cover the financial loss as a result of bank fraud. It is a kind of indirect loss.   Just tell her to write your account number at the back of the paper, walk into your bank's branch and tell the teller to deposit it. There is no need of mailing. It is important to understand that when or before you received services from your medical provider(s), you almost certainly signed a document stating that you understand that you are fully responsible for the entire bill, even though the provider  may be willing to bill the insurer on your behalf as a service. In almost all cases, this is the arrangement, so it is very unlikely that you will be able to dispute the validity of the bill, since you did receive the service and almost certainly agreed to be fully responsible for the payments. With regard to the discounts, your medical provides have likely contracted with your insurer to provide services at a certain price or discount level, so I would base all of your negotiations with the providers and/or the collectors on those amounts. They can't legitimately bill you for the full amount since you are insured by a company they have a contract with, and you are not self-pay/uninsured, and the fact that they haven't been paid by your insurer doesn't change that, because the discount likely depends on the contact they have with your insurer and not whether or not they are billed/paid by your insurer. Please note - this is a common arrangement, but I'd recommend that you verify this with your insurer. Unfortunately, payment in 90+ days is often typical by insurance standards, so it's not yet clear to me whether or not your insurer has broken any laws such as a Prompt Pay law, or violated the terms of your policy with them (read it!). However, you need to find out which claims rep/adjuster is handling your claims and follow up with them until the payments are made. It's not personal, so make this person's life miserable until it is done and call them so often that they know it's you by the caller ID. I would also recommend contacting the collector(s), and letting them know that you don't have the money and so will not be able to pay, provide them with copies of the EOBs that state that the insurance company plans to pay the providers, and then ignore their calls/letters until the payments are made. When they call, simply reiterate that you don't have the money and that your insurance company is in the process of paying the bills. You have to expect that you will be dealing with a low-paid employee that is following a script. You are just the next person on their robo-call list, and they are not going to understand that you don't have a pile of money laying around with which to pay them, even if you tell them repeatedly. Make sure that you at no point give them access to any of your financial accounts, such as a checking or savings account, or a debit card - they will access it and clean you out. It is likely that your insurance provider will pay the providers directly since they were likely billed by the providers originally. If the providers have sold the debt to the collectors (and are not just employing a collector for debt they still own), you may have to follow up with the providers as well and make sure that the collection activity stops, since the providers may also need to forward the payments to the collectors once they are paid by the insurance company. Of course, if the insurer refuses to pay the claims, at that point I would recommend meeting with a lawyer to seek to force them to pay. What would happen if you was to cash a check, didn’t realize it was   to you and your finance company, take it to a local business that has   a money center, they cash the check without even having you sign let   alone having the finance companies endorsement on it . The money   cleared my account like a couple months ago and it was just brought up   now .. ? The reason why the check was made out the owner and the lender is to make sure the repairs were done on the car. The lender wants to make sure that their investment is protected.  For example: you get a six year loan on a new car. In the second year you get hit by another driver. The damage estimate is $1,000, and you decide it doesn't look that bad, so you decide to skip the repair and spend the money on paying off debts. What you don't know is that if they had done the repair they would have found hidden damage and the repair would have cost $3,000 and would have been covered by the other persons insurance.  Jump ahead 2 years, the rust from the skipped repair causes other issues. Now it will cost $5,000 to fix. The insurance won't cover it, and now a car with an outstanding loan balance of $4,000 and a value of $10,000 if the damage didn't exist needs $5,000 to fix.  The lender wants the repairs done. They would have not signed the check before seeing the proof the repairs were done to their satisfaction. But because the check was cashed without their involvement they will be looking for a detailed receipt showing that all the work was done. They may require that the repair be done at a certified repair shop with manufacturer parts.  If you don't have a detailed bill ask the repair shop for a copy of the original one. "A day or so later I get an email from the mattress company where the rep informs me that they will need to issue me a paper check for the full amount and that I would have to contact Affirm to stop charging me. To which I rapidly answered ""Please confirm that with Affirm prior to mailing anything out. On my end the loan was cancelled."" To which the rep replied ""confirmed. It has been cancelled."" I think your communication could have been more explicit mentioning that not only was the loan cancelled, you got your initial payments. You have not paid for the mattress. The refund if any should go to Affirm. The Rep has only confirmed that loan has been cancelled. at what point, if any, am i free to use this money? I was planning to just let it sit there until the shoe drops and just returning. But for how long is too long? Sooner or later the error would get realized and you would have to pay this back." "•Have you had any problems with bills not being paid? NO •If you had issues, were they addressed satisfactorily? Answer: A big issue that blindsided me:  With my bank, the funds come out of my account right away, but the actual payment is done through a third-party service. On my bank's online site it appears that the payment has been made, but that does not necessarily mean that the intended recipient has cashed it.  Looking online at my credit union's site is useless, because all I can tell is that the payment has been sent. The only way to verify payment is to contact the intended recipient.  Or I may telephone the online bill pay representative at my bank/credit union, who has access to the third party service. If I do nothing, after 90 days, the check is void, at which time the third party service notifies the bank/credit union and the funds will eventually end up back in my account.  I learned this today, after a third-party paper check to a health care provider was returned to me via mail by the recipient (because insurance had already paid and I did not owe them anything). The money was in the hands of the third-party service, not in my account, nor that of my credit union nor the recipient. At first my credit union told me that I would have to contact the third-party service myself and work it out. I said ""NO WAY"" and the credit union did get the money back into account the same day. This is a sweet deal for the third party, who has my money interest-free anywhere from a few days to three months. And risk-free as well, because the money goes directly from my account to the third party service." Look up escheatment. Companies that have unclaimed property are supposed to send it to your State government. They should have a unclaimed property department of some sort. In short, the company is going to have to pay either you, or your State (In Your Name) so they have to pay it either way. It would be easier for them to just give you new check. Expect them to give you some grief in verifying it has not been cashed and such... but if you have the original, in hand, it shouldn't be too bad. A 'Lost' check may be harder to get replaced. Not a lawyer, don't want to be. Long story short, 8% turned out to be the tipping point because it was the average subordination level of the A rated tranches of the subprime MBS bonds.    The reason this was the magic number is because of the way bonds were placed during the period.  Basically no end user wanted to take on the risk of buying below A-rated paper, so instead of being sold directly, these BBB rated and below bonds were re-packaged into CDOs and tranched off.  Again, the higher rated paper was sold off to whomever, while the BBB and below stuff got reshuffled and repackaged into other CDOs or CDO^2 , further levering up the initial subprime bonds.    Now, back to the magic 8% number. Remember how I said that 8% was the subordination level for the A rated subprime paper? The other way of saying that is once defaults reached 8%, the BBB and below tranches of the the MBS were completely wiped out.  Since the CDOs were largely made up of these BBB and below MBS, once they started getting written down so did the CDOs.  When the lower rated CDO tranches started to go, because they were also repackaged in the same way, it just continued the negative feedback loop and before long even the  AA and AAA rated paper was seeing massive losses.    As more and more supposedly safe paper started to get wiped out, highly leveraged CDS contracts started coming due, causing AIG (which had written contracts on over $500 billion in assets) to get downgraded by the rating agencies, putting it on the brink of going under.  Because basically every major bank had exposure to AIG, had they gone under, the other banks would have all had to write down those contracts at the same time, essentially causing the entire financial system to collapse. No, I felt that's what aweraw was trying to say, but they were not doing a good job of it so I took a crack at it from my point of view. I see where you are coming from too. Really, I suspect if we all sat down and had to write a unified view of the role luck plays in our lives we would be surprised how much we agree. :)