Went private, but no cover

Hi,
my son went into hospital using our private healthcare plan. As it happend he was supposed to be covered, but was'nt. We only noticed this after 5 days in hospital. So 5 night in a private room, blood, urine, xray and lumber puncher tests.
Im afriad of what his mught cost us.
Anyone know whta my options are?

basilfaulty said:

Hi,
my son went into hospital using our private healthcare plan. As it happend he was supposed to be covered, but was'nt. We only noticed this after 5 days in hospital. So 5 night in a private room, blood, urine, xray and lumber puncher tests.
Im afriad of what his mught cost us.
Anyone know whta my options are?

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Depends. If you were told by the insurer that the claim would be covered and they then reneged then you definitely should chase them up once your son is discharged.

If that's not the case (e.g. you thought this was something that was covered but then discovered it wasn't after checking documentation), then I'd say get in touch with the hospital's patient accounts office and explain the situation to them. See if you can work out some kind of payment plan. It probably won't be the first time they've encountered a patient who isn't covered by health insurance, so hopefully they'll be reasonable. At the risk of adding to your woes, you'll also need to pay the consultants involved, as their costs aren't included in the hospital charges.

Also, if you haven't spoken to your insurer already, there's no harm ringing them to make sure it isn't covered.

The same happened when an relation went into Mount Carmel to have a baby, only to discover that they forgot to pay the VHI. I dont think they got much change out of 10k!