Mortgage and Insurance

I have an ongoing (but almost resolved hopefully) grievance dealing with two entries on my credit report submitted by a collection company.  In order to prevent confusion, I will address these account issues individually. 

 

Account 1: All three of my credit reports state that I owe a balance of $108.00.

 

This account is for medical treatments received by my son back in 2004 at the ER. I informed them that my medical insurance had previously provided me with an Explanation of Benefits (EOB) stating that my patient responsibility for the claim was $30.67 and that the $108.00 amount is the incorrect amount. Additionally, I made the original provider aware of this issue prior to it being turned over to collections. I paid the amount my insurance said I owed.

 

Unfortunately, even though I was informed that the matter would be resolved, I was surprised to see that this issue was still pending when I reviewed my credit report this year. The difference between 108 and 30 or $78.00 is showing up on my credit report. It showed up on my credit report in 2007. Silly of me not to look at my credit report every year and catch this sooner. I faxed the EOB to the collection agency and they have adjusted my account so the account is paid in full and they emailed me a copy of my “receipt”.  I requested in writing (through an attorney) that the credit entry be deleted since this was clearly a provider error. 

 

 

 Account 2:  In regards to account 2, the balance on this account, according to my credit report, is $187.00 for medical services my son received in 2003 from the ER. After speaking with my insurance company and obtaining a copy of that EOB, I learned that the reason this account is in collections is because the provider used an incorrect social security number when submitting the request to the insurance provider. I had previously informed the original creditor that this account was mis-billed after receiving my EOB and stupidly, I assumed because they told me they would re-file the claim, that it was taken care of until I saw my credit report. As you are probably aware, whenever a visit is made to the emergency department, every provider bills their claim individually.

 

Ironically, other providers billed my insurance using the correct SSN for the same incident and date of service and they received timely payments and I was not left with any patient responsibility from those claims. However when the ER doctor filed his claim through some physicians’ networking service, they used my son’s SSN. Therefore, the insurance company returned the claim because they could not find that SSN in their system as a participant. 

 

Is this the provider’s fault or am I just irrationally placing blame? 

 

My insurance company called the collection agency and told them that the provider needs to re-bill the claim and request a “timely filing waiver”.  The collection agency, I suppose, decided that was too much trouble so they wrote the amount off and told me they would delete this account as well.  Because these two blemishes on my credit report are clearly the provider’s error, and because they are interfering with my FICO and therefore my ability to obtain a “fair” loan, I am demanding that these items be deleted from my credit files with Experian, TransUnion and Equifax. The collection agency apparently agrees and they have begun the process of deleting both of these items from my credit reports. 

 

My questions are:

 

How long will it take for this to go away? Since these are the only negative accounts on my credit report, will that give me a significant boost when they fall off? Is medical debt treated any differently than credit card / loans debt?