“The representative at Physicians Plus told me I could write a letter requesting that I be able to pay the $60 and get the pump payment sent back to Medtronic. Could I talk to them on the phone, I asked? No, I was told. They don’t take phone calls.”
I’m not sure I understand this paragraph. Given that you were already having a phone conversation with a representative from Physicians Plus, who else did you want to talk to? Someone from Medtronic? The specific person at Physicians Plus who signed off on retracting the payment?
Because the way I’m reading this paragraph, it sounds to me like they were actually saying that they would be happy to send the payment back, they just needed something in writing from you that you were offering to make the $60 payment, but you wanted to handle everything through a phone conversation and not give them anything in writing until after the payment was already sent back to Medtronic. Am I misunderstanding something? Because if that’s what you wanted, that’s just not how insurance companies operate, unfortunately.
I’m not saying I am OK with what happened to you (or the structure of our health care system in general), not by a long shot. I’m just saying that if you write the letter they might actually be responsive and not just throw the letter away. I also don’t think that if you start making payments to Medtronic now, that it will have any bearing on the dispute with Physicians Plus. Take a step back for a minute, if you start making a couple $200 payments to Medtronic, and then Physicians Plus comes through with sending back the $9,300 payment to Medtronic, do you really think Medtronic’s going to go back to Physicians Plus and say “Nah, we’re good. She’s already making payments of $200 per month.” No, they want their money now (they’ve already demonstrated that) so of course they’ll accept the payment from Physicians Plus. They may (should, in my opinion) also refund any payments that you made out of pocket while resolving the dispute with Physicians Plus.
I don’t work for either Physicians Plus or Medtronic, so I’m not in a position to guarantee anything that I said above. And again, I don’t think it is right that you have to go through all this anxiety just to get proper health care. I just hope you don’t give up too quickly.