Putting my attorney hat on
Who knew that in my life as a stay at home mom, I would have the chance to try my luck at being an attorney for a bit. Or give in & hire one. But, that's what started the craptastic week this morning. We are being sued. Yes, S.U.E.D. By our STUPID insurance company.

We received a summons for a court date a couple of months ago. When I was served the papers (in my PJ's!), I was fired up. Oh yeah! You want to sue us? I'll show you, you stupid corporate vampire! I'm going to counter sue!

This is the sitch: We had individual group coverage for both Bill & myself when we were working at The Gym. Then I was fired (for being pregnant...yes! Pregnant!!). Bill added me to his individual plan & it became a family plan. We had our premium payments taken directly out of his paycheck. We paid our co-pays before we saw any nurse or Doctor (because they won't even let you through the door of the clinic without a swipe of you debit card, cash or check). After Logan was born, we added him to the family plan. Then there was The Battle of The Missing Paperwork.

Apparently, HR at The Gym has no idea how to handle paperwork. They never sent information over to the insurance company. After many phone calls & conversations with insurance company managers, it was figured out & we were told we had coverage. Or so we thought. After a couple of months, it started all over again. I figured, "Forget it. We'll settle this in court, because I'm not paying thousands of dollars that we don't owe".

So we got served.

We gathered up our evidence that we paid premiums & co-payments (hmmm. Funny that we didn't have coverage, yet they we more than happy to take our monthly payments!) & met with the insurance company's (actually, the credit collectors) attorney. Since people are usually at fault & not The Company, we have a new court date in a couple of weeks where the attorney will look over the evidence & send it to the Insurance Company (who already has all of this evidence on file). I am very tempted to calculate how much we paid in premiums to see if it would be worth it to counter sue. I'm holding off to see what happens, because that could complicate matters & just make it worse.

In a worst case scenario, the insurance company will find fault with The Gym, in which case we'll have to pay the insurance company, then turn around & sue The Gym. Best case scenario, the insurance company will see that they need to figure out how to minimize administrative errors & improve communication with client companies & drop the case.

Either way, this is a huge pain in the butt because two big corporate companies can't find capable people to do efficient work. Hell, it seems like they can't even find people to rub two brain cells together (I know this is very true of the HR department at The Gym). So, we're stuck in the middle of this mess. I'm hoping it resolves before the end of the month (in our favor, of course).