Complaint Review: Family Orthodontics of Dublin - Dublin California

 When you go to the dentist or orthodontist for a very expensive treatment, you want to know that how much you have to pay after the insurance and most of the time, you will rely on the orthodontist office to verify the insurance coverage for you after you provide them your insurance information. The office will then verify that and give you the estimation to see if you can agree on the fee to move forward the treatment. Or the office might ask you to verify your insurance plan with your insurance provider is there is a confusion. However, the case that I have is very different from that. I walked in to the "Family Orthodontics in Dublin". The office manage, Hoang Tran, told me that he will verify the plan for me. I told him that I have to go with the $3000 network coverage and he said he will check. I got a letter from him after that saying his office is under my network so the total out-of-pocket cost for the treatment will be $1248. So we agree on the fee and started the treatment on 5/12. On 5/12, Hoang asked my husband to sign a letter, in the letter there is a fine-print that saying "However, it must be understood that our office has no relationship with your insurance company. If for any reason your insurance company does not pay the estimated benefit amount, it becomes your responsibility. Hoang never told me about the fine-print when he sent me the confirmation email, as a matter of fact, the insurance is under my name so my husband did not know that Hoang set him up. When I found out the truth from my insurance, Hoang told me to wait for his feedback because he just had a new born baby, I did not know that the reason he asked me to wait so he can charge me another month of treatment fee while his wife Dr.Hsieh was on maternity leave. I thought maybe Hoang is in the middle of signing up the insurance network so there is a misunderstanding from the insurance. Later on, my insurance told me that Hoang opted out the network about a month ago and he had the experience dealing with the same coverage before, so he is fully understand that the office is not under out insurance network for $3000 coverage. After Hoang waited about another month to receive all the insurance payment, he then told me that the insurance is a mess, it is all insurance company's fault. The only win-win solution is to refer them 10 more customers or write a good review on yelp so he will give me some discount, otherwise I will have to pay him $1500 more out of the estimation. He even told me that if I go to the other provider, I will just lost $1966.76 that he took away for only two visits in 7 days. He won't refund us if we opt out. I want to share my experience to let everyone know that even for a medical provider, it is possible that you might get ripped off. Because there is no government watch dog on this and this is not malpractice, you don't get support when someone like Hoang and Dr. Heish trying to send misleading information and asked you to sign a contract so they can get away. They try to maximize the profit at the cost of others and I hope no one will suffer from this anymore.