When The Bill Comes To You For Someone Else’s Mistake

Worth Trying To Get The Person Who Messed Up To Pay Up?

So here’s a fun little conundrum. In December, one of the seven midwives at my Park Slope office sent me for a couple of procedures at the local hospital. The first was the usual, if disgusting, glucose test, to which all pregnant persons must subject themselves to make sure they haven’t become diabetic. To succeed, you must, on an empty stomach, down a glass of what tastes like flat, room-temperature Coke that’s been sitting your grandparents’ cabinet for a decade, and then, over an hour during which you may not eat or drink anything else, not puke, pass out, or register any bodily discomfort.

The second was to ascertain that I needed, and then get some, RhoGAM since my blood, they told me, was Rh-.

In the morning, I drank the hideous drink and let them take my blood twice. In the afternoon, I came back as instructed to pick up the RhoGAM. Except I didn’t need it. You’re Rh+, not Rh-, the lab worker told me, as though that were an obvious fact I should know about myself, like that I’m a mammal or that I hate “Love Actually.” It’s right there in your chart, and it’s there in the blood work too.

When I went to see the midwives, I explained what had happened. Sure enough, one of them had made a mistake reading my chart and so had sent me for the unnecessary blood work and RhoGAM. They corrected the record and made a note and that was the end of it.

Until today, when the bill came.

The hospital is charging me $660 for “lab services” — presumably both the combination of the glucose test and everything RhoGAM-related. Oscar picks up $268 of that, leaving me with a $392 tab. The part of that that covers the glucose test is my responsibility, sure. What about the rest of it, though? I don’t want to cause trouble or to get in a heated squabble with my caregivers; but I also don’t want to pay for a procedure I didn’t need that I was sent to because of someone else’s mistake.

Should I call the midwives and ask if they’ll pick up their part of the bill, since it was their error? Be firmer about it and tell them I expect them to pick up their part of the bill? Or suck it up, because it all goes toward my deductible anyway, and what is life if not a series of meaningless events, some of which benefit us and some of which don’t, and throughout which we can only hope to maintain some perspective and our senses of humor?

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