I was hospitalized at Morris Hospital in Morris IL last September for an emergency appendectomy.  Showed them my insurance papers and everything, got the surgery, and was out 24 after (although not feeling well at all for about a week).  Then when I got home in Montreal, received a bunch of medical bills totalling USD 20000.  I thought they would have dealt directly with my insurance company, since they had all the contact info.  Apparently doesn't work like that.  Waited for about 2 weeks to make sure I have all the different bills, then sent everything to my insurance company.  During the following month, got about 10 phone calls from hospital asking for their money, etc. etc.  Kept receiving new account statements too.  I called my insurance company to see what was going on: they told me that they were waiting for the various service providers to provide them with detailed bills.  They also told me to not send a penny to the hospital, and that the medicals providers would probably harass me asking for their money (which they did). Fast track a few months later in February, my insurance company called me to tell me they had finally settled the bill... for 4k less than what I was billed.  

My questions are: is it normal that it took so long to finally get the bills paid?  Is it normal that hospitals and other service providers use inappropriate techniques to pretty much extort money from their customers, when they know very well it is the insurance co.'s job to pay (referring here to the numerous calls, often late at night).  Is it normal that the hospital will charge less to an insurance company that they would charge to an uninsured individual.

Finally I got a surprise this morning in the mail: another USD 1500 bill for anaesthesia... 10 months after it happened?  That's not normal (at least to me).  My one last question is to know how well protected is our private information with these private hospitals.  I received a phone call one month after the bills were paid, from someone claiming to be from Morris Hospital; the lady had my phone number and address, and knew I had been at Morris hospital in September.  She wanted to confirm my address to send a bill.  Confirmed it with her, as it sounded legitimate.  She called me back 5 minutes later saying she wasn't allowed to send bills to Canada, that she needed a US address where to send the bill.  I told her they had already sent me 4-5 bills in Canada.  She said ok and goodbye.  I did an online check of the phone number and it was a # based in North or South Carolina, and was linked to some fraud involving medical records.  seems like there's a big privacy problem there.  

Nick