017 Healing from Chronic Medical Bills

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I found an article in Money Magazine saying that there are over 80% errors in all of our medical bills, and that is the big cause for bankruptcy, our medical bills, because it's such a high dollar.

I even heard once that it was the number one reason.

I believe that.

Wow.

In your experience, you think that's between 80 and 90% of all medical bills have an error on them?

Because it's like, well, the computer, it's an IT error. It gets into the billing office and they're like, oh well, the computer is right, just send it to the patient and have the patient pay. And that's always the attitude. You know, they don't stop and say, oh, is this right? They just send it on. And so many people do not question the medical bills. Let's reduce the debt and save the patient.

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Together we will live. Here are your hosts, Aaron and Sarah Sanchez. Friends, welcome to Lying Voice. Today's interview is a good one. Kathy Ferguson is gonna tell us a whole bunch of information on how we can correct some of our medical debt. Sarah and I have incurred a lot of medical debt. Every procedure, every event that she went to ended up with, oh, here's a $200 bill, here's another $1,500 bill, and those just kept stacking up. And one of the really encouraging things that I think you guys are gonna like about this episode Basically what she is saying is they're mostly mistakes on the part of the insurance company. So she's going to tell us how to help ourselves and how she can help us to get rid of some of that debt, move the decimal points a couple of numbers. Like, this is really cool stuff. But before we go there, I kind of want to let you guys know a little bit about what's going on with Sarah and I and just tell you some of the things that are working and some of the things that aren't, just kind of give you a picture of where we are. At the moment. So babe, hi.

Hi.

How you doing?

Fine.

You have been a busy bee.

Yes, I have.

The house is in disarray, but it's a good disarray. It's disarray of organizing instead of piles being piled up, so it's a good thing. What is your intent behind all these piles that we have in our house right now?

You know, when we moved 2 years ago into this house, I was totally disabled, and our friends and family and church family came and packed us up, moved us, and unpacked us.

Yeah.

And that's where everything has—

That was 2 days before you left for treatment.

Yeah, 2 days. I just kind of directed furniture, but I have not been at the point where I can organize or unpack. And we moved a whole, like, shop into our garage. Our garage is jam-packed and I use so much of my energy trying to do my protocol, trying to be engaged and ready for the kids when they come home at 4 o'clock, and then dinner and homework and bedtime. That apart from that and taking care of myself and doing the work that I'm doing during the day, that's a lot. Yeah, and it uses a huge percentage of my energy and stamina for every day just to kind of COVID the basics. But what I've been able to do in the last couple of months has been bend and lift. I haven't had the ability to bend and lift in years. Yeah, it's been a while, because every time I would bend over and I would sit up, my head would feel lightheaded and I'd see spots and sparkles and I felt like I was gonna pass out.

What you're experiencing is a direct effect from one of your co-infections. I can't remember exactly which one. A lot of people are experiencing the same thing, so I, I know what you're saying most of our listeners are dealing with, because just the maintenance of your life is all-inclusive. I mean, it takes everything you have right now. So we are very excited and we feel so blessed. I mean, I am not complaining about the piles.

So what I've been doing is I have energy and, you know, when you have 5 kids and we moved into a smaller house than what we came from, we are just bursting at the seams. So you have to be organized and I have not had the energy, stamina to do the organizational stuff. And so my mom has been a huge help to us throughout these years, like switching kids' clothes out at fall and spring, but I've just been at a place the last few weeks where I can do more of that on my own. And what is so thrilling is it used to be if I couldn't complete a task, I would never get back to it because I would run out of energy and then I'd have to move on. So we had lots of unfinished projects, but what I'm able to do now is like I cleaned out a cabinet and I was actually able to not complete that in one day, but I went back the next day and kept working on it. So that's been a huge sequencing thing for me. I feel like I've kind of had to learn how to redo stuff. Even when you walk through the house and pick up after all the trails that kids leave everywhere, I just started grouping like items together. Oh, these go in the bathroom. And then the next day, if it's still there, then I can move it to the bathroom. And it sounds so simple, but it hasn't been because I couldn't think clearly enough to organize and I didn't have the strength to lift or bend. And so I spent like 5 days last week running around the house cleaning and organizing, and it was so fun. Yeah, I did run out of a little bit of energy, so I had to take a few days to rest.

But yeah, which is normal. I mean, that's the ebb and flow. It's— and I always try to talk you down from those high points where you're going at it full bore.

I know, but it's so fun. And, and I gave myself, I gave myself a week where I was like, you know, usually I do my protocol first and foremost every day. Like, it has to be the utmost priority, otherwise it gets knocked off the list. And I was like, you know what, I've been really faithful for this whole protocol for the last 2 years. I've been faithful. It feels like that's all I've done. I'm gonna give myself a week to get my house in order after the summer.

Yeah.

So I have had fun doing that.

Well, the reason not to bring up all this is not necessarily to brag on where you're at, but mostly to provide hope. So if you're just starting treatment, you're— I mean, 6 months ago, we weren't at this spot. You can't look at it day to day, but you can look at it month to month and even 6-month time. The longer you can stretch your time and look at where you were, the better you're going to look. And those are encouraging. Don't look at what you didn't do today. Look at what you didn't do a year ago and what you're able to do now. One of the things that has really helped you is one, sticking to your protocol, going through Lyme treatment. You're very disciplined in that, and that's what you need. But there also is a new product that we've been looking at.

It's called Plexus, and it is labeled as a blood sugar regulator and weight loss product. It's homeopathy, you know, in a little baggie that you mix in water every morning. But yeah, its original purpose was weight loss, and I have not lost any weight. Yeah, none at all, which is good because your weight is good. We don't want I was just telling Aaron that I really would like to lose a few pounds, but you know, I went through all those years of where medication made me gain 60 pounds, and then I would be not processing nutrients, so I lost 50 pounds, and I would just— my weight has fluctuated so much. Honestly, at this weight, it feels kind of safe to me. Yeah, like it feels good.

I'm not complaining.

I don't feel as frail. The only thing that I have changed— so in my 2 years since going to treatment, I've been married to my protocol. I take a ton of Standard Process supplements. I take a lot of Himalayan salts, and I have had my regimen that I was committed to for 2 years. So that is up this month. I've officially hit the 2-year mark. Yeah. I tell people my quality of life is improved a thousandfold. My stamina is probably somewhere around 60%. And I've gone back and looked at older Facebook posts where I said, oh, I think I'm at 80%. But honestly, I had no awareness of what a healthy person was like. I was so far removed from that. And I had help from my mom. Now that I don't have as much help and I'm doing the managing of the house and organizing chores and keeping kids on task, I'm at about 60%.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I was married to my protocol for 2 years, and I had a friend who has Lyme, and she said, Sarah, you have to try this product. It's really helpful. It's helped me. Watched videos on YouTube, and I just keep getting all this feedback from people with Lyme disease. And we already are spending a pretty significant amount of our income on my protocol, so yeah, we were a little hesitant to start with a new Yeah, so she gave me 2 weeks worth and I felt results within 3 days, and I was hooked from that point forward. So this summer I started taking Plexus plus liposomal vitamin C, and we'll put the links on the show notes page, but it's just helped me tremendously be able to continue on with my life and minimize the downtimes.

Okay, well, without further ado, let's get into our interview today. Again, I know you guys are going to enjoy what Kathy has to say. She has a lot of good information. Puts a little bit of hope back into our finances and even in some of those medical bills that we're still dealing with from years back. You know, maybe there's a solution to it. So I hope you enjoy this episode. Hi folks, I wanted to tell you about Audible. Sarah and I love Audible. We use it to listen to all the books. I'm an auditory learner, so I love to just listen. I get distracted too easily when I'm just sitting there reading. There's too much going on in my life anyway, what with the podcast and full-time work and all the other things that life throws at you. Basically, the only time you have is in your commute. So all these books that Sarah has been telling me, "You gotta read this book," I just do it on my commute, and I can do it while I do my chores. If you want to get this offer, all you gotta do is go to lionvoice.com, look for the button on the right-hand side, it'll say, "Get your free Audible download." Once you sign up through Audible, you will get your first month free, your first download free, and after that you get billed monthly. And there's a lot of times where I'm counting down the days, you know, money's a little too tight, I can't spend another $20 on a book. But at the end of every month you get one free credit and you can use it for whatever book you want. So hope you guys enjoy Audible as much as Sarah and I did. Thanks for helping support LionVoice.

Hi, Lion Voice listeners! This is Patty, and this is Lex, the host of Dear Friends and Family. On your journey to fight, heal, live, join us every week as we share inspiring stories of experience, strength, and hope from people living full lives in the face of chronic illness. It's our goal to build a community where people can be open and comfortable, talk about their struggles, It's a serious topic with an upbeat feel. Thank you for helping us to open minds one show at a time.

Check us out at lovethefam.com.

Yeah!

Welcome everybody to Lion Voice. Today with us we have Kathy Ferguson. Kathy, are you ready to help us put the puzzle pieces of finance into place?

Absolutely, that's why I'm here.

All right. Kathy Ferguson is the CEO of Medical Debt Resolutions Consulting, and what she does is she is a financial patient advocate. And for all of you out there who have been in the fight with your insurance companies on getting bills paid and you get— continue to get those mysterious bills after the fact, she is gonna shed some light on some of those and services, some tips for us, and just bring her perspective after 20 years of doing medical billing to help us get our bills lessened and to have more power moving forward. So thank you so much for being here with us, Kathy.

Thank you for the invite.

And before we get started, I have to tell the story a little bit of how Kathy came up and how we found each other. Sarah had been just doing her presentation to a group of about 150 100 people for our Fight Heal Live, which is— you'll hear more of that as it comes on. It's another branch of Lime Voice. At this presentation, Kathy heard what we are trying to do, and she came up and started talking to us about her financial expertise, in particular within the medical system. And so it just seemed like a really good fit. We're really excited to talk with you because, you know, Sarah and I have had a long history with 15 years of medical care, and that means a lot of interaction, and it's taken over. It's overwhelmed us. And so I was really excited to hear from you, Kathy, as well as I know a lot of our listeners right now are dealing with the same issues. So they're either just now getting into the Lyme where they're starting to have to do all these different tests, or maybe they've gone— they've been like Sarah and I where we had years of misdiagnosis, and each one of those misdiagnoses is another avenue that you go down. So if it's whatever it is, you go down all the medications and those mistakes happen. For Sarah and I, we just have all these little— not little, but thousands of dollars here, thousands of dollars there that have just kind of added up throughout the years. So before I keep telling your story, why don't you go ahead and tell us a little bit more about what you do?

Okay, I have over 20 years of medical billing and collections experience. I had volunteered my services helping people resolve their medical debt. I'm an auditor. I am very detailed, research-oriented, find a lot of mistakes in our daily medical bills, and those are a very high expense in the United States. It's unfortunate that the patient is always the one that this is dumped on. And I'm always saying it's paying till it hurts. Mm-hmm. I resolve. I resolve the debt. I do a complete audit of all the billing. I find the mistakes. I go to the healthcare provider or the insurance company and get it fixed. If you've been paying on claims a long time, they're older stuff, there's times the healthcare providers will write it off.

Yeah, tell us about that avenue. Of having bills written off.

The healthcare providers, they always demand a certain amount of monthly payment. Well, sometimes you can afford it, sometimes you can't. My experience, I see people saying, well, they said I had to pay $40 a month. I only have $20, so I didn't pay. And I tell them, you pay the $20. I don't care if you can pay $5. You send them whatever you can. They'll see a consistency that you're paying, which will help me to walk in and say, let's get a deal here. Oh, okay. And let's write it off. Freedom for this patient. Wow. There are healthcare providers that will do that, and there are some that will not, but it's a great tax write-off for them rather than the $20 a month.

So explain what you're able to do for people, and the most exciting aspect, I think, of your business is that you can do it in all 50 states.

Yes, yes, I've done it around the country. The only thing I have problems with are the mental health because of the Affordable Care Act. There's so much restrictions, but anything else, I am good. And I educate the patients: when you go to the doctor, ask questions, ask questions. When you leave, you know, they, they're filling out the form, checking off the boxes as you're there. Ask for a copy so you know what is going on. And when you get your explanation of benefits, match the two.

And you said that's called a super bill?

Super bill. Providers, some of them call it different things, but that's the main—

interesting.

Then if they don't match, you know, you got 7 charges from the healthcare provider and 5 paid by the insurance company, well, there's a problem. What are the non-covered charges? Why are they non-covered charges? And why is that patient being expected to pay those non-covered charges.

And you said that often you find that you can reduce people's bills significantly.

Yes.

Can you give us an example of that?

Recently I've had a cancer patient kept receiving two bills in the mail, two separate dates of service, and she said, I pay my $40 copay every time I go in, and sometimes they throw a $350 deductible a $250 deductible at me, and I'm a single mom and I have cancer. And, and I said, let me look. And so I went in. I do everything online, and I can look up, you know, we have thousands of health insurance companies, and majority of them you can look up online. And that's how I work. I ended up auditing the whole entire year of 2015, and there were mistakes everywhere, just everywhere. So I went into the health insurance company. I said, there's problems here. And they said, yeah, we have a billing problem right now with our billing system, but just tell her to wait it out, we're fixing it. I said, no, I'm here today to fix it. Cancer patient does not need financial stress, just like patients with Lyme disease do not need any financial distress. And I went in and I sat down and we went through every, every line, every charge, and The bill was, I think it was like between $5,000 and $7,000. Well, when I left it was $18.65.

Wow.

And I said, I am not happy. But I'll give you a break for today.

For the $18, that's awesome.

I know, and the patient was crying on the phone when I called her.

Yeah, of course.

I said, don't pay it, but let's sit tight, let's sit for a little bit. I know how to find the mistake. I work, I work hard for the patient. I only do this for the patient. I don't work with healthcare providers.

Okay.

And you know, we're human, we make mistakes. These are, a lot of these are IT mistakes that they don't catch right away.

And within the years, within the insurance program, right, they're making those.

Yeah. And see, healthcare providers make mistakes and our health insurance companies make mistakes.

Mistakes also.

And I've worked both sides. Okay. And that's why I'm so familiar.

Yeah.

You know, I've worked the whole realm.

Yeah. Well, one of the things that Sarah's experienced, and this is why I think your services are going to be so helpful to people, is with Lyme you end up— and with a lot of other chronic diseases such as fibromyalgia and even rheumatoid arthritis can have the same brain fog effect where people, because of their sickness or because they're in pain, they just don't have the brain function. And that kind of stuff, like you said, takes— in your example, takes 20 years experience.

Yes.

And so for someone who is already struggling mentally, dealing with all their issues, trying to stay alive, literally trying to stay alive, exactly, you know, a couple insurance bills that come through is just swept under the rug. Especially in our case, it was just like we We don't have the— any energy to even deal with this. So I'm so excited that you have a desire to do this for people too, because you were telling me earlier that that was one of the things you— you started out for free. Is that—

yeah, I used to volunteer my services, and I had helped a lady who was self-employed, had a small insurance company, was in the hospital. Her hospital bill was $57,000.

$43,000.

And her insurance paid a small portion, and she was continuously paying small amounts to the healthcare providers, and it was overwhelming to her. And they were calling her saying, "We need more money." You know, they said— well, when I made the call, they said, "Well, she needs to be paying $900 a month in payments." Wow. And her balance was $43,000. And I said, "$900 a month is more than her mortgage." "Will you work with her?" And so I worked with the supervisors and found all the billing mistakes. So the supervisor says, "Okay, Kathy, what do you want me to do?" I said, "I want you to write off $43,000 and give this patient the courtesy, the good customer service she deserves." And they're like, "That's not a good idea." Not in their point of view, no. I said, "Well, you know what? Look at the great tax write-off." on your end. And she said, okay, give me 24 hours. And she called and she said, we've written off the balance, $43,000. And I thought, I've got something here. I want to help people. I want a business. And that's when I opened Medical Debt Resolutions Consulting.

I love it. And you guys, I don't know if you can— you don't have the privilege of seeing Kathy here, but you can tell in her voice she's She's just got that fighting spirit. And as she's told us about her different customers, I'm just like, oh, it's awesome because I dealt with that stuff for so many years and I was the same way. Like, okay, let's make this work, let's figure out payments, let's— and then probably 3 years ago, I just couldn't do it anymore, right?

It's overwhelming.

It was. It's overwhelming.

Gives you a headache, you know. It's not good for your health. Um, it's, it's exactly— it's just a huge financial—

it's a burden.

Emotional.

Yeah, emotionally too, especially when so many patients I find, well, I got the bill, I guess this is what I have to pay, right? Which is so wrong. Wow. That's when I step in. I know how to do a complete audit of everything, and I research and I look and I just dig, make a difference. And sometimes they're right, they're not always wrong. But I can go in and I can say, "What can we do?

What can we do for this patient?" So in your experience, you've seen a lot of folks like Sarah and I in the same situation. In most of those cases, is it fair to say that most of that is clerical error? Where our financial debt that we have is in most of the time, is that a clerical error or is that kind of a combination of us not dealing with it because we're dealing with our disease.

I think it's the air of people just, you know, an IT air, you know, and then it gets to the business office and whatever the computer says, well, that's what they owe, and nobody looks, right? Nobody researches. And see, I've worked for hospitals, I've worked for family practice, I've worked for insurance companies, and I always was auditing. I've always— I'm a numbers person. I like to audit. And something doesn't look right, patient's not getting a bill. But anymore, oh, we don't know what's wrong, it doesn't look right, but oh well, just send it on, they'll pay it. Oh yeah, and it's so wrong.

In 2012, I was basically completely debilitated. I got a herniated disc, and when I applied for disability I was put on Medicaid and got kicked off of my insurance, and then I was told 30 days later that I no longer qualified. So there's thousands of people in that exact— because I've heard so many stories of people when they apply for disability losing their insurance. The thing is, like, we incurred $30,000 of medical bills overnight because I had a herniated disc. I was going in for surgery. And all of a sudden, and I didn't even know I didn't have coverage till after it had all unfolded. But then when you call, if you, and I was so out of it, I was on massive amounts of painkillers. By the time I called and was like, hey, let's get this figured out, they're like, oh, it's in collections. And then they won't even talk to you about it.

Right, right.

So what do people do in that situation? Is it good to just pay a $5 payment every month or Yes. Okay.

Every situation is different. They're all different. But I say pay what you can. I don't care what they're telling you. I don't care about the phone calls. Send them whatever you can. Because like here in New Mexico, they all want like at least a $40 monthly payment, but not everybody can afford that. And I tell patients, send $5, send $10, whatever you can. If you can send a little more, but be consistent. Be consistent. There's a lot in collections that should not be in collections.

So by paying that, what does that do?

That shows the healthcare provider side that you are making the payments, that there is some consistency, because then I can step in and say, look, we're going to negotiate here. We're going to solve this problem. This is my suggestion. It's really gonna benefit you. Mm-hmm. Financially, it's gonna benefit you, but more important, I've got to save the patient's finances.

Yeah.

And like I said, all situations are different, and when it gets into collections, it's a little bit different, but there's a law, there's Affordable Care Law out there that protects the patient, and I wish I had that with me, but I don't.

Explain what that is. How does it protect the patient?

It just gives the patient a little more help with the finances rather than them after 60 days or not. I think it's like 6 months before it can be turned into collections now. Can't be turned over to a collection agency for 6 months. Hmm. Okay. And there's some companies here in Albuquerque that— healthcare providers that have their own collection departments, and so it doesn't go to an actual collection agency, which is better. Because they're a little bit easier to work with. I like the face-to-face if possible, but I do this throughout the state, throughout the country. I was in California on vacation and— well, it didn't end up being much of a vacation. This patient's— all her medical bills were denied because she was diagnosed with Huntington disease, which is shrinking of the brain. And the health— the doctor's office was, um, billed— billing mental health. Well, her insurance did not cover mental health, so they kept expecting the patient to pay, the patient's family, and sending them all these bills and harassing them. I spent 6 hours and found the correct diagnosis code for Huntington disease.

Oh my goodness, seriously?

Yes. And I got every single medical bill paid with no balance due to the patient.

Oh my gosh.

But that's what I like to do. I like to research. I like to fight for the patient. That was a coder in a medical practice not doing the job, and they know mental health is rarely covered.

And see, this is what's so unfortunate about chronic illnesses is if you don't have somebody who can fight for you— exactly— mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally, like You end up— you don't have the stamina when you are literally trying to survive and learning how to walk again and, you know, trying to come out of like the depths of despair. You don't have the skill or the know-how. I mean, it took you 20 years of experience.

Yeah, yeah, that's what I like to do, and I know what to look for. I just dissect those bills I look at all the charges, I look at everything. I, I just do a lot of research. There's always something crazy.

Yeah.

Wow.

They are not always true.

I'm so happy we met you, Kathy, because you and I are gonna do a lot of work together. Absolutely.

I'm excited because that's what I— that's my passion.

Yeah.

You know, I'm very passionate. I know Lyme disease is a chronic illness. And it's not good, an added financial stress. It's not good, and it can be fixed. I can fix that.

Yeah, I think my— I think the last few years for myself, even though I'm not sick with Lyme, the stress alone from Sarah being sick has caused a lot of health problems for myself, I think. Now compound that onto a family that's dealing with Lyme who is actually sick like Sarah, and has that kind of pressure, that kind of thing, and I'm a healthy body and I'm already feeling it. So I can't imagine, you know, all these people that are trying to deal with it while going through their chronic illness. It's just a nasty thing. And I'm so excited because that's why we wanted to do LymeVoice, is to bring resources like you to put another puzzle piece into them, into their, into their tool belt, if you will. So You know, I think for you being their little pit bull, their little paperwork pit bull, even though if you look at Kathy and we'll put a picture of you online, you're not gonna see, but I think most of our listeners are gonna agree this is the girl we need in our team to get this done. And I'm really excited. You were telling us earlier that you were gonna give us a free consultation to any LimeVoice Yes, I give a free 30-minute consultation, and this is wherever you're at in the country.

If you can get scanned to me your bills and your explanation of benefits, and so I know what I'm looking at as our 30-minute free consultation, and I tell you right then and there if I can help you or not.

Really?

Yes, I'll be able to tell you. I'm not going to waste your time and your money, nor mine. All situations are different. There's only one that I've seen that I could not help because I couldn't get the bills from the— oh, okay. You know, so this is my passion, and what you are doing for the Lyme voice is absolutely incredible.

Thanks.

This is just awesome, so helpful to so many people. Yeah, and what a blessing.

Yeah, we're blessed to do it.

Absolutely.

Yeah, there's so much healing. I mean, there's so much loss in chronic illness. Yes, across the board. Financial, families are falling apart.

You need—

you've got to find those little tools or resources that can just even elevate you to a place where you know what to do, because I think that's a big part. I remember in 2012 and 2013 there were months where I spent more time on the phone with my insurance company than I did with anyone else. And it was— I would—

including your kids?

Including my kids. I was just sobbing because I have a herniated disc, I have this underlying infection that wasn't identified at that point, and I am spending literally 15 to 20 hours a week on the phone fighting with the insurance company to get coverage.

I know, I know, it's, it's crazy. And you know, there are foundations out there, and I'm going to look to see if there are foundations for Lyme disease that help patients pay their financial bills.

Oh, okay.

There is that, because I volunteer for Cancer Services of New Mexico. There's foundations there, there's 4. That will help.

Oh, okay, great. What's your preferred method? How can people get a hold of you?

Okay, I'm Medical Debt Resolutions Consulting, and my website is abqmedres.com.

And what does that spell?

Medical resolutions.

Medicalresolutions.com. Okay, okay, cool.

And we'll have—

I'm like, uh, my dyslexic brain.

No, let me see. I just got, I just now got a Twitter and so that is @MEDDebtResolutions, MEDDebtResolutions on Twitter. On Twitter, okay.

And of course, we'll have all this on the show notes so that if you guys are like Sarah and I and can't process that without an actual link, you can go ahead and link on that, it'll send you right to Kathy and don't forget to tell her that you heard about her online voice so you can get your free 30-minute consultation. I think that she's going to be a huge help to those out there, and hopefully we're going to overwhelm her phone.

And here to help.

Yes, ma'am.

And what is your typical— I know you said you typically require a retainer. What is that fee?

I charge a $500 retainer fee, which is 5 hours of work. There's no other charges. It takes me about 5 hours to resolve a medical medical debt. But, you know, that depends on what the bills are.

Okay. And it's a one-time fee per incident or per claim, or, um, it's per time.

Okay, per time, depending on the size amount of the bill.

Okay.

You know, if there's over $100,000 with 22 medical providers, well, I have to charge more.

Sure.

Of course, I work with the patients.

And you had mentioned too getting services covered. For instance, if you don't have acupuncture in your plan, can you advise people on how to go through that process of getting that covered?

Yes, yes. I have to look for some resources depending where they're at. Okay. What their financial situation is, there's usually a solution there.

Wow.

I would think every state has a folder of resources What does that mean? All kinds of what your city offers, like the city of Albuquerque. You know, I have books that offers all these resources. You need healthcare information, you need health, you know, some specific insurance, the Centennial Care, whatever.

So you can even just advise people over the phone?

Yes.

If they need services that they don't have access to, there may be a service out there that you can find. Wow.

Yeah, we're gonna—

and I'm gonna look for some foundations for Lyme disease.

Okay.

You know, like what I can't help with, they would possibly—

awesome.

Yeah, and then it'll be about 2 weeks before we air this, so if you wanted to forward those on the email, we'll have a whole— on our website onlinevoice.com, we'll have your information. And if we need to add any, like if you have a PDF or something that you would like to share with us, we can put that on there. And let people access that.

Or tell us the foundations. Or to—

yeah, yeah, absolutely. Put the links, any information that you come up with and you want to pass along. Yeah.

Kathy, can you tell us another example of just another patient that you were able to help?

I had worked in a billing department at a local hospital. An employee had left, and it was a baby that was born premature. Was born in Colorado, and they brought the premature baby here.

Okay.

And I had replaced an employee that was just getting small payments here and there and charging the patients. Parents were crazy, you know, they're in Colorado, their baby's here, going back and forth, and the medical bills piling up.

Yeah.

And they were a little crazy, and I would— I called them because I'm like, you know what, I found some big mistakes here that I want to tell you that I'm gonna fix. You know, and I went to my supervisor and I said, we've been billing the wrong Medicaid because the patient's address is Colorado and New Mexico is paying. The patient's parents were still being billed some things, right, because there was so much with the premature baby. And the baby was here for 3 years. Whoa, 3 years. So that was pretty big. I received a check for over $60,000. For 1 month of service, getting the correct insurance company and no cost to the patient.

Wow.

And you know, the healthcare providers and insurance companies aren't always crazy about refunding. That's a different story. But sometimes they do.

Okay.

Okay.

Sometimes they do.

That's interesting.

And like my cancer patient, I told her, I said, you're going to get a If you get a big check in the mail, yeah, do not call them. Go celebrate with that check. That's your money.

Awesome.

Yeah.

Wow. Well, thank you so much, Kathy. We appreciate your time coming out here and speaking to us, and I think—

thank you for the invite. I really appreciate it.

Yeah, I think you just offer an incredible service that people desperately need.

Yeah, and it'll be interesting as we go down this path together. Absolutely, absolutely. We may have you back when you have, you know, maybe some more information for us on what can help our clients and that kind of thing. So thanks again.

Thank you.

Disease is contrary to life. Therefore, wherever disease exists, life must also fight to exist.

Good job fighting, Lyme fighters. Keep it up. We'll see you next time. Lime Voice contains general information about medical conditions and treatments. The information is not advice and should not be treated as such. Okay, Lincoln?

Okay.

The medical information on Lime Voice is provided as is without any representations, warranties, expressed or implied. Okay? Okay. Lime Voice makes no representations or warranties in relation to the medical information on this podcast. You must not rely on the information on this podcast as an alternative to medical advice from your doctor or other professional healthcare provider. If you have any specific questions about your medical matter, you should consult your doctor or other professional healthcare provider. And for you, you consult your parents, okay? Okay. If you think you may be suffering from any medical condition, you should seek immediate medical attention. You should never delay seeking medical advice, disregard medical advice, or discontinue medical treatment because of information on this podcast. Got it, Lincoln?

Got it.

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