UIHC

University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics made the list long before the list even existed. Right now there is a payment sitting in my flag-up mailbox addressed to their billing department that will end a saga of unpleasantness that stretches back to September of 2004. That's right, it has been more than a year and half.

It all started innocently enough. My insurance changed and a doctor's visit was submitted with an out-dated card number. I was charged several hundred dollars when insurance was denied. I called to work it out and I was assured that it would be. I think my brain has blocked much of what followed during the subsequent months as a coping mechanism, but I'm pretty sure it involved a call to their customer service once or twice a month, being put on hold, occasionally disconnected, being the go-between calling the insurance company to say "they said that he said that they would...", meeting with actual people face to face who promised it would be taken care of, but it never was.

Every time someone tried to step in and fix this problem it got worse. Confounded to the n-th degree! During the most recent few months it was not unusual for us to receive 10 or 15 statements from UIHC a month. Sometimes 3 in a day. Why? Because they are insane. And single-handedly determined to let their inefficiency run the entire healthcare industry of these United States into the ground.

When the insurance issue was finally resolved (hooray) I happily sent my credit card number in on one of the dozens of invoices I had sitting in our family mail inbox. That didn't stop the madness. Weeks later I was still getting them. So I called and gave my credit card number to the nice agent over the phone who charged it and assured me it was taken care of. That didn't stop them either.

Finally, this last week, I got a call. I can only assume this dramatic change in who is initiating the ongoing effort to solve this problem means that the world is coming to an end. They pointed out I was receiving an unusally high number of statements and did I in fact owe them any money anymore? He actually asked me this. I said, "Please. Please. Please take my money and leave me alone." He chuckled. I think he may have thought I was joking.

The credit card charge was showing on the computer, but inexplicably it didn't go through. It wasn't denied. It wasn't stopped by any known force of the universe. It just mystically was not to be. So, I offered to send a check. And that's what is sitting in my mailbox right now with the little flag up waiting to end this chapter of my consumer angst. Hallelujah. The end. I hope.