(By Anonymous) [No, not them, but a well-respected writer who choose SFist in which to rant about their woeful experience at St. Luke's, using a veil of anonymity. -- SFist]

The billing department at St. Luke's Hospital in San Francisco is a shady operation. Last month we received two bills for about 250 bucks each. Our primary doctor is based out of St. Luke's, so most medical needs are taken care of there. One of the bills was for services this year, and since $250 is my insurance's yearly deductible, we paid it, no questions asked. But the second bill, you see, was for services from 2007. When we called St. Luke's to ask about it, they said that Aetna had paid for the services in 2007, but then "took the money back."

WTF?

So. We called my insurance, and asked them about it and they had no idea what St. Luke's was talking about, and told us to check our records and see if we had indeed paid them last year around the time the services were done. Alas, we checked our records, and could find nothing indicating that we had paid St. Luke's at that time, so: we went ahead and forked over the money.