Online therapy provider suddenly claims that my appointments are not covered by my insurance and is attempting to charge me $500
Last year, I began seeing a therapist through Headway. Over the course of 3-4 months, we met seven times.
When I was seeking treatment, I was using Psychology Today. I used the filters to find someone who accepted my insurance. I reached out to them, and they told me that they use Headway for online appointments. On the Headway website, I verified that they accept Anthem BCBS, and I provided them with my specific insurance information which they used to verify it themselves. For each of the appointments that I had, I was charged a $40 co-pay and paid this every time. This was exactly what my insurance had informed me would be my out of pocket cost, and they would cover the rest. Each time I paid this, my insurance continued to be listed as verified on the Headway website, and my appointments were "in-network".
After some time, I stopped setting up new appointments for personal reasons. Roughly two months later, I get an email from Headway saying that my insurance was suddenly found to be Out-of-Network, and that I am responsible for paying the total cost for each appointment. After several back and fourths between me, my therapist, my insurance, and Headway, it was discovered that Headway was submitting the claims wrong and this was the issue for why they were being flagged as out-of-network. Instead of listing Headway as the provider, they were listing the therapist. Since the therapist operates out of Headway, he would of course appear to be out-of-network because he does not have a personal contract with Anthem BCBS.
Me, my therapist, and my insurance have all asked Headway directly to resubmit the claims properly, and they continue to submit them with my therapist listed as the provider. Each time they do this, they reach out to me to tell me that Headway and Anthem either don't have an agreement in general, or they do not have one for my specific plan. I have provided them with screenshots showing this to be incorrect, from both Anthem BCBS and Headway's own website, but they do not budge at all.
They continue to attempt to charge me the money, and though they don't currently have my payment information on file anymore (they removed it at the start of this issue to ensure I didn't get charged if they did find it to be a mistake on their end), but I am worried about them digging that info up and charging me, or sending it to collections.
I submitted a claim to my insurance immediately and never received any sort of answer. I am at a loss for what I should do. I refuse to pay it, and my therapist says that I shouldn't either. He obviously deserves to be paid for his service, so I can't ask him to forgive the charges, and Headway is not budging. I keep telling them that I won't pay it, but I get robotic responses back stating that there is no agreement between Headway and Anthem BCBS so I am "unfortunately responsible" for paying the charges.
What legal avenues do I have in a situation like this? What are my risks of not paying? I am so beyond tired of dealing with this. Headway has no phone number to reach anyone directly, I have very sporadic email correspondence with different customer service employees and I feel entirely helpless.