The adventures of the hospital bill did not end with the day I chased all over town. It took another month, several more phone calls, and a lot of frustration. Here's a synopsis:

Middle of April, I start to get calls from the collection agency. I finally answer one. The guy is very nice, not intimidating at all like they are in the movies, talks very slowly and reassuringly. In short, very good at what he does. Tells me that, whether or not I am at fault, it is going to be reported on my credit 60 days after being sent to collections, which is May 27 (hey, that's today!). So he recommended that I just go ahead and pay it, and "your insurance company could always reimburse you."

I told him I realized it was his job to get the money for his agency, and knew he really did not care where it came from, but that I did not owe the money and was not about to front it and trust Kaiser to pay me back.

More phone calls, and finally I get through to "Trudy" at EPMG, who professed not to know anything about "Adam" taking me off collections. Real condescending, as usual. She kept typing things into her computer and saying Cameron was coming up "ineligible," and that I was not going to just be "taken off collections" unless I sent the money. Finally I said, "Might it have anything to do with the fact that you guys copied down my son's medical record number incorrectly?"

"Oh," she said, a little less high-horse. They'd left out a zero in his number, which I'd noticed before but didn't mention because I thought 'Adam' had taken care of it. Sure enough, when I told Trudy the right number and she typed it in, it came up "Eligible." Sheesh! So then she promised to "take me off collections." She then gave me a stern lecture about how, "in the future," I should look over my bills carefully and call right away if there is a problem. I didn't give her a flip answer because I just wanted her to do her job, but I wanted to say, "Yes, in the future I will make sure you guys don't f*ck up something as important as his medical record number and send me to collections without checking it."

I guess she did do her job because within a week I got letters from Kaiser saying they'd paid the bills, and when I called the collection agency and typed in my account number it said, "This account has been cancelled." Whew!