Champva And Medicare Part A

[Watershed]

My wife is covered by ChampVA. She also had filed for SSD about 3 years ago. The SSD was finally approved last year. She was paid retro from the date she filed. Now ChampVA says that she owes them the money they paid to the doctors for the period when she wasn't even covered by Medicare. Does this make sense?

[john999]

Have you called ChampVA and talked to them? I don't know how they could say she owes money before she qualified for part A or part B. She probably needs to get part B at some point. ChampVA should go after medicare. This gets complicated.

[Watershed]

Have you called ChampVA and talked to them? I don't know how they could say she owes money before she qualified for part A or part B. She probably needs to get part B at some point. ChampVA should go after medicare. This gets complicated.

The first time I called ChampVA (Denver) I was told by a woman (whose name was on a piece of paper here that got thrown away) to fax my wife's SSD letter particularly the page that showed the Medicare info to see if maybe we were not notified in a timely manner. So...faxed the info to her and got no reply for a few days. Then faxed again asking about the 'timely manner' thing. No response. A week later got the ten medical bills again from them...one totaling over $3000. It said that it had been 30 days since I was notified of the debt and that now the totals are more because interest had been tacked on. I called Denver ChampVA again and got a man who said he sympathized but he could either send me paperwork to arrange payments or send paperwork for a 'hardship' case. When SSD retro'd her pay they also seem to have retro'd her eligibility for medicare. She hadn't even been approved for SSD yet when these bills were incurred. Thanks

[Pete53]

ChampVA is a very tricky organization and they require anyone who has Medicare to also have Part B.

[Watershed]

So......called the ChampVA in Denver again and explained again why I didn't think it was right to retro medicare part B. End result...they apologized all over the place and said this should never had happened. We received a letter from them stating that we did not owe them the over $4,000. Wow, and to think that I was ready to start making payments.

[Pete53]

Glad to hear it. You should always talk out billing problems till you are satisfied

[john999]

If you talk nice to ChampVA you can get a result. They are not as bone headed as the rest of the VA probably because they are small. They remind me of the VA insurance. Easy to do business with and fast unlike rest of VBA.