Scammed by sleep dentist

Hello:

I am new to the United States and did not know much about the insurance system so I trusted the sleep medicine dentist I found on the web.

When I was looking for a dentist familiar with oral appliances I found one and the first thing that I did was to call his office and ask if they knew if they were an in network provider of Anthem.

His assistant told me she didn't know and I offered to fax her my insurance card so she could check that out.

I did this on 3 different occasions on different days and she ALWAYS told me "No, this is not how it works. We won't be able to tell you if your insurance will cover you or not until you come here and get examined by the dentist. After that we weill submit your information to Anthem and will find out if you are covered or not".

Of course now that I know more about the insurance system I realized that that was a LIE. One of the first thing they have to do (and with more reason if I am asking them) is to submit my insurance information to Anthem to find out if I will be covered or not.

Before anyone tells me you should have done this or that, or you should have known, etc. remember that I as I said I am new to the United States and I never knew this dentist was trying to scam me.

Long story short Anthem sent me a bill of $783 dollars !!. Apparently this dentist did a lot of bogus tests like an $400 dollars ENT test !!

I was shocked when I saw that ridiculous outrageous expensive test which consisted only in touching my neck with his fingers and measuring my neck's circumference with a tape measure.

Anyone has had this type of problems with these type of scammers?

Thanks and feedback is greatly appreciated.

I don't know what state you are in, but you should be able to report this to the Consumer Protection department of your state.

I live in Indiana.

My company has a lawyer and they want to take legal action.

Thanks