Up to 50,000 erroneous bills were issued as a result of Veolia's attempted updates to 77,000 water meters.
But am now told by the ombudsman's "inquiry officer" that it cannot enforce a judgment, nor determine how long a service provider may take in order to sort out erroneous billing issues.
He said his client had repeatedly sought clarification from insurance companies, which admitted that claims were denied once it was learned that the drug was experimental and unapproved, and not because of erroneous billing codes as claimed by the Government.
"Should we ever send erroneous bills?No," Higgins says.
It is an alternative to the fee-for-service merry-go-round that leads to complicated, often erroneous billing and escalating healthcare costs.
The legal drama stems from the botched rollout two years ago of a new billing system, which spewed out thousands of erroneous bills, some of them wildly inflated.
Pickel vouched for a legal deal that Consumer Watchdog and several attorneys argue gives the utility too much power over refunds for erroneous bills.
As the agency tried to handle a massive backlog of erroneous bills, it was unable to put enough workers in place to quickly respond to customer complaints.
Poway City Manager Dan Singer said the erroneous billing began when a new consolidated meter was installed at the hospital in 2008 and then incorrectly read until last summer.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has scored a legal victory in its case against a large consulting firm hired to rollout a multimillion-dollar billing system that produced thousands of erroneous bills.
Horomanski, from Erie, Pa., was shocked recently when she received an erroneous electric bill displaying an account balance of "284,460,000,000," with a first payment due of $28,176.
