Two years later I was still receiving bills or statements of what the insurance had paid in full. I am not sure when it ends or what to do to make it go away. Blessings.
When my lawyer posted the notification in the paper to probate an account my husband had it was several months after his death. I got notifications from the court that two companies were making claims, both health related and both paid in full months prior. My advice is to stick it in a box in the closet out of sight, just in case.
Eileen
My brother who retired from the insurance business industry advised me to pay no human. He said let both my husband's insurance and mine fight it out. After 13 months I still get EOBS for things that have been paid. I put them in a large file. The hospital charged twice for the services they rendered on the last day of his life. It was $20,000. I hope that they get as much as they can they were wonderful. They just aren't getting anything from me. It's worked great. Some doctors after hearing that he died wiped the bill clean. They didn't have to do it but I felt that was God's plan and I went with the flow.
Be very careful.
Some bills may be owed and some are not. (You need to talk to a lawyer about the details.)
They will also reduce the bills as if you do not pay right away -- i.e. they bargain with themselves.
Basically, the medical industry throws bills out expecting them to be reduced by the insurance companies.
I remember having an incident with my wife who was from Japan. We went into a physical therapist office to find out what my final bill was. (We found their billing quite opaque.) Their accountant explained how various insurance compnies had different standards and they charged different ammounts based on this. My wife, from her background, got quite upset. We ended up leaving.
They never did send me a final bill.
They instead reissued everything to my insurance company and it was accepted for billing (i.e. double billing.)
I was upset at the time but did not complain since I thought that "Heck I'm ahead."
I mention this as background.
The situation that you are in is very common.
After my wife passed away, some of the doctors did not bill at all for a co-payment. They preferred to write it off.
Some however were quite aggressive. (A few actually tried to pass bills after her date of death. Curiously, these were accepted by the insurance company.)
Again, I'm not a lawyer (Although, I've had this advice from a lawyer.) If your assets are in joint, you can remove your spouse's name from those accounts and titles. There is no estate then to charge. You can freely ignore those bills then.
There are two things that will happen.
The medical companies will immediately send additional chages hoping that an estate exists that they can charge against. And you might get more annoying calls from a collection agency.
As for the latter, I found that calling them back got them to surrender the account back to the hospital. Everytime they called me I called the back three times. When they blocked my number I used a service through which I could place calls from overseas.
I remember one conversation when the woman from the collection agency complained that she could not "play this game anymore". I politely commented that maybe she was in the wrong line of work -- she laughed.
That has ended it for me.
There have been no affects on my credit and it has been several years.
The point I was trying to make is those people will keep charging until you or the insurance company stops paying.
An unfortunate but very true fact of life.
I wish you all the best and much comfort.
Taipan 54
