So I got home from work yesterday to find a small pile of mail waiting for me on my desk. Three letters. I opened the first, a credit card offer from Bank of America. Shredder. I opened the second, more credit card checks from Chase Manhattan (or are they just "Chase" now?). Shredder. I looked at the third. Hm. Something from a PO Box in Marshfield. Something from the local hospital?

No, but close. It was a letter from a fucking collection agent. Ain't that a bitch?

Probably at our wedding, and probably from my niece Typhoid Melissa, I contracted strep throat at the end of May. Strep doesn't just go away on its own, so off to the doctor I went. Apparently what I was suffering may not have been strep throat. The culture came back negative, but the doctor said that the quick, cheap test they do is only around 90% accurate. She treated me as if it was strep and the problem went away, so… probably strep. It sure felt like strep anyway.

I certainly wasn't expecting to get sick, so I didn't have any money available to pay that hospital bill immediately. My clinic visit was in early June and the bill arrived in my mail box in late June. I didn't have any money to start paying them until late July.

My total bill? $173.18. I sent them $50 at the end of July, then again at the end of August, then again at the end of September. I mailed my final payment of $23.18 on October 31st.

The hospital turned me over to a collection agent on November 2nd. Bastards!

Ok, here are the problems I have with this:

1. I was paying them regularly. $50 a month on a less-than-$200 bill is pretty good, I think.

2. They never warned me they were going to place the bill with a collection agent. I know they're not required to do that, but doesn't everybody do that anyway?

3. It's $23.18. Twenty-fucking-three dollars and eighteen fucking cents. Isn't it going to cost them more in processing fees than they'll recover from the agent?

4. I fucking paid it! I don't owe them shit!

Cum-guzzling whores! Now I have to write a letter to the collection agent disputing the validity of the debt. Of course it must be in writing because phone calls just don't count.

The Bunny tells me none of this would have happened if I'd called the hospital and established a formal payment plan. But I never figured that really necessary. All one would need to do is look at the account history to see I'm paying more than 25% of the debt every month. Apparently, this is not good enough. One needs to specifically tell them "You see what I'm doing there? Yeah, that's what I'm doing."

Assholes. As if I needed one more reason to bitch about health care.