An Old Bill that I thought I paid off !!

There appear to be several issues here:
1) Who was originally responsible? At the time the medical services were provided, where you an adult? If you were a minor, your parents might have been responsible. If you were an adult, you would probably have been responsible yourself.
2) Was there insurance coverage at that time? Was it your insurance, or thru your parents insurance if you were a minor, or covered while in college as many policies allow?
3) If insured, was the provider "in-network", so that contract terms between the insurer and provider, including requirements about timely submittal of claims and agreed upon rates, are binding? If in-network, and they don't submit claims timely, the debt may not be owed. In addition, the charges would have had to be adjusted to match the insurance schedule.
4) Is this bill one for which you were already billed? You may already have paid some or all of it.
5) If so, are insurance and your payments accounted for, and is the amount correct?
6) When was the last payment made, what is SOL in your state, and has SOL passed?
7) If not, and no payments were ever made, has SOL passed?

You are dealing with an alleged bill from 1992, that can't be reported on your credit reports, and probably can't be collected in court due to SOL. The hospital clearly was able to bill and collect payment from you up to 1998, so if there was some outstanding amount due, they had ample opportunity to ask for payment. The records you had available at the time, including statements showing payments applied, were probably more reliable than some bill produced out of the blue 14 years later.

You have a right to question its legitimacy, even if you feel morally obligated to pay it. Nor does just claiming your mother was responsible mean your mother was actually responsible, or owes this amount now, whether you would pay it for her or not.

What type of medical bill was this? Hospital services, physician services, lab services, pharmacy, etc?
What names are on the bill itself?
Does it correctly list you as patient?
Are the dates correct?

Does the bill itself say your mother was responsible? Doesn't mean that is correct. You might have been covered under your parents insurance, even though you were an adult, yet any co-pay might have been legally your own responsibility, as an adult. Or an insurance claim might have been submitted with the wrong name, denied for that error, never resubmitted, and now not submittable and not owed based on contract terms between provider and insurer, if the provider was in-network.

You might have had care as a minor in the past, and have your mother on some records for one of your medical providers as your parent and guarantor, yet these services were provided after you become an adult, and the records used for billing your mother were no longer applicable.

Or even one of your medical providers may have gone bankrupt, or may have been sold to new owners, and any accounts thought to be outstanding may have been sold off as "bad debts".

Who knows on what basis they are claiming an amount is due, or on what basis they are claiming your mother "owes" it?

 

Does the bill have the correct date on it, is it accurate, or is it for charges you already paid for? Is this a bill, or a statement, showing payments made?

Hospital care is frequently billed by different legal entities for physicians, lab, hospital care, emergency care, etc. What type of services is it and were you already billed for, and paid for, that type of service when you finished payments in 1998?

The date of last activity appears to indicate that this is the same bill for which you made and completed payments in 1998. If all they are sending is the original bill, with no statements showing the payments you made, the validation is erroneous and incomplete. Their own date of last activity should indicate that they should provide a statement up to that date showing all payments and the resulting reduction of balance due. Did the hospital just sell off the original bill as an unpaid debt, even though you had actually paid it off in 1998?

They cannot legally put anything on either of your reports, assuming the most recent default of any payment agreement, if any, on this bill was made over 7.5 years ago.

If she wasn't there when you checked in, then her signature is not even on some admission acknowledgement for this visit.

Since you were a legal adult, she should reply, in writing, CRRR, to the CA that this is not her debt, and that she is not legally obligated for it as you were a legal adult at the time the services were provided, and responsible for your own debts. She should refer them to you. If they continue collection attemps against her, we can look at what remedies exist.

If this is not her debt, they should not be dealing with her, nor should she be dealing with them on your behalf. You deal with them directly. Under no circumstances should she make any payment, or agree to make any payment, on a debt that is not hers.

HIPPA may or may not be of value here, but if they keep trying to collect from her, or claim to you that she said that you agreed to anything, you might then bring in HIPPA to force them to stop all communication with her on the matter, since it is YOUR HIPPA rights violated by their disclosure to her of your medical information. Even if she is your mother, they have no right to disclose any of your adult medical information to her without your consent.

They might have an out as long as they could claim she was guarantor, but if both she and you deny that, that defense to HIPPA violations, and to FDCPA third party disclosure, ends. The FDCPA disclosure violation is probably a stronger case for you, since you have a private right of action on it.

You then deal with whether this is legitimate, and what is appropriate in terms of payment. They should legally send you another first letter notifying you of your FDCPA dispute and validation rights, since so far only your mother has been contacted and requested validation. Her response to the validation sent is that it shows the debt is not hers, but that has no bearing on what validation you will need to determine how you want to handle this.

If this is for the same services that you were billed for earlier, you may not owe anything. If this is for services for which you were never billed and never paid, SOL would be based on 1992, so in Nevada it is probably long passed. It would be appropriate to consider SOL as part of your negotiating should you choose to make any payment of any kind, and you would want an agreement in writing in advance, regarding settlement in full, no sale or transfer of the debt, no reporting, etc. Their objection to any of these conditions would be be grounds to just send them a C&D, since they should not legally sell a settled debt, nor report any debt this old anyway.

Nonetheless, if you chose to settle, you would want appropriate terms in any agreement to make this never become any problem again, unless they were to breach that agreement. They really have nothing else to offer in exchange for your payment.

Whether you feel you should pay only the original amount, or interest on top, for a bill they never sent you, when they were billing you and you were paying another bill, I will leave to you. Maybe that should depend on your concept of equity, and in what manner they engage in collection.

In the mean time, the debt has not been validated to you, you have not been notified, nor have you had the opportunity to dispute or request validation. In all contact, you dispute this debt.