Consumer complaint received 2016-03-28
Product: Debt collection — Medical
Issue: Cont'd attempts collect debt not owed — Debt was paid
Company: APEX Asset Management, LLC (NJ)

I have gotten a notice from APEX collection agency for medical bills paid long ago. 

Attached to this complaint are the following : 1 ) XXXX XXXX ' XXXX XXXX billing statement ; 2 ) XXXX XXXX ' Receipt for payment for APEX bill ; 3 ) APEX collection agency 's statement ; 4 ) Health insurer 's ( XXXX 's ) statement showing payments Please note that the receipt XXXX XXXX mailed to me is undated and I ask the CFPB to find out why XXXX XXXX provides undated receipts as a matter of routine practice and policy. 

My experience of several years is that XXXX XXXX ' billing department is an unmitigated mess. In past years, I called my doctor 's office numerous times to give it the correct billing address for XXXX in this area. Many medical providers here have not heard of XXXX but more have heard of XXXX which seems to be the name that XXXX operates under in this region. After providing XXXX telephone numbers and claims address to my doctor 's office repeatedly, over the phone and in person, I heard nothing for some time. When I later continued to get statements from an out of state billing operation for XXXX XXXX, I also talked to it numerous times. In short, it resisted taking the information I tried to give it for XXXX and it was clear that it had been sending its bills to the wrong address for XXXX. When it continued to bill me for the same bills which had been paid, I gave up and insisted that it contact my doctor 's office which assured me that it had the correct address and billing procedure for Multiplan/GEHA. At this point, the XXXX XXXX XXXX department refused to call my doctor 's office, the very same office that the billing department was sending out bills for. When I asked the administrative person in my doctor 's office about this and asked her to try to contact XXXX ' billing center, she insisted that they were separate operations and I got the impression that the doctor 's office also would not contact the XXXX XXXX billing office. It left me with the impression that even the doctor 's office of the doctor I saw wanted nothing to do with XXXX XXXX ' billing operations. 

It appears that XXXX XXXX ' billing operations are wildly incompetent and for a long time have simply pushed paper through their offices with little care to their accuracy or truth, so that they can get phony statements to collection agencies as soon as possible. It appears that someone has calculated that there is no " cost-benefit '' to running a legitimate billing operation at XXXX XXXX under the supervision of professional medical auditors and that even doctors in the XXXX XXXX practice know this and want to distance themselves from the billing operations. I venture to say that if XXXX, XXXX, XXXX, military and other federal government health insurance programs investigated the billing practices of XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, it might find that it has been swindled out of a considerable amount of money, through falsified billing codes and other activities of routinely falsified financial statements. ( See more about this below. ) Some recent encounters with XXXX XXXX billing operations raises more doubts. Last year when I saw XXXX XXXX again after some time, a clerical assistant in her office wanted to see my driver 's license. I refused to give it to her. She claimed that she wanted to see a photo ID but then when I offered my passport, she did not want it but wanted the driver 's license. Next I offered a photo ID of a university which, although it was expired, had a large photo of me on it. She declined this as well. She ended up not using any of the photo or other IDs I showed her but she kept asking for a driver 's license. I did not provide one to her for several reasons. Among others, it seemed pretty clear to me at that point th