New Collection Account on My Equifax

Bummer really...

Just when I started making some progress, a collection showed up on my Equifax credit report and I'm back in the red again. I have been working so hard on my credit score so this was a shocker indeed.

The culprit is a medical collection account from 2008 that was deleted from Equifax earlier. It looks like the previous collection agency must have sold that account to a new collection agency which makes it perfectly legal for them to put it back on.

A few years ago, the company I worked for back then had some issues with their insurance provider which led to our health insurance getting dropped and later reinstated several times over about two years. Several times we received a letter in the mail saying that our coverage was cancelled for nonpayment, then later we'd get an insurance card in the mail welcoming us back.

So the medical collection is due to this insurance fiasco with bills presenting when the coverage was lapsed. What a mess!

Does anybody have a suggestion abou how to combat this with the Collection Agency? Does the fact that this is obviously not my own fault have any bearing on the issue? Please help because I want to get my credit score back over 600!