I am aghast, my mom died in June, and I have been getting lots of bills from her various doctors. Until this week, I was able to log onto mom's "my medicare.gov" account, and see which claims had been submitted, which were paid, how much she might owe, etc. This was always very helpful for me to watch over her medical bills.
Well, today I got a big surprise. They have deactivated her account! I thought maybe I had wrong password, so I dug around into how to reset and ended up on a chat session with medicare. The chat person told me, once they are notified of a death, that person's online access is PERMANENTLY de-activated!!
The only way for me to find out about her unpaid bills, now, is to wait for a bill from doctors or hospital or ambulance vendors. This is very inconvenient.
The medicare chat person said, this is all because of the HIPAA law, and there is absolutely no way around it. They also said I can call the 800 number with my questions about specific bills.....but that is not quite the same as being able to see a complete list of what is in process, what is going to be billed.
I am really wondering why this has to be this way. Has anyone else had the same experience?
Now are you doing probate? If so, then once you get Letters Testamentary issued (and get like a dz at least of these at the initial request and they should be cheap too) you can mail a letter to the vendors a request for billing with the LT that shows you as executrix and request all billing and invoices sent to you as a debt of mom's estate. Or you / your attorney file a Notice To Creditors and then only deal with those who file a claim to probate court to be paid; most won't btw.
I will suggest this, you want to wait before you start paying any bills. There well could be bills sent that are not accurate. I've gotten a few bottom-feeder letters that appear to be debts but are not…what they are "service contracts" which imply a debt is due to start or renew the service…they are somewhat smallish like $ 85 for pest control or $ 150 for AC/Heat contract and it's just for the contract with no actual work done, pretty good scam. Your mom still had her home right? If so you will likely get oodles of letters for "as is" cash offers on the house (a couple might come to the house too so tell the neighbors to be on the alert). One of these sent over a yard maintenance guy to do an estimate too, I parked behind his truck, told him I had called the police and had a concealed carry license (fibs but so worth saying) so he was trapped & couldn't get out till he told me the backstory…..which was he does an full scale landscaping estimate and then the "as is" buyer deducts his estimate from whatever "offer" he told you over the phone. Scam.
Really once they die and word is out, all sorts of low-lifes hit on the estate. Be on your guard. Between the obit notice and SS info being easily available, it's beyond easy to get info on your mom.
I had gotten to the point where I waited for the 60 day reminder bills before even considering them for review.
Try not to stress over it. Unfortunately, MC only sends out paper EOB's on a quarterly basis - so you'll have a wait. I particularly loved the one that came last Christmas; 30 pages to sort thru and match up with bills.
My problem has been that MC doesn't always forward the bill to the secondary insurance like they're supposed to. Then I get a bill for the balance. I have to send it back with a copy of the death cert along with a copy of her secondary insurance info and a note scribbled on the invoice asking them to bill the secondary. And just when you think you've got it handled, a provider changes billing services and they start spitting out old bills because the cvs file in the system didn't carry over the data correctly - It's a mess. Hang in there.
Funeral homes are under obligation to report a death to SS and in turn Medicare to prevent fraud. When a spouse dies, the lowest of the two SS payments is dropped. In my case, if DH dies before me my $800 will drop and I will get his 1500. If I die before him, he loses my SS. Miltary benefits? My SIL, husband in Air Force 20yrs, told me she is not entitled to his pension. Her explanation, he was in the service, not her. I guess that would include any benefits he had?
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