$500 MRI bill, no payments? WTH??

B. Send them $100. What are they going to do about it? They sent you the bill how many months late, that’s their problem. I don’t know what your collection law is like there, but around here they can’t send you to a collection agency for at least 91 days after you receive the bill, so you can spread your payments out over a bare minimum of three months.

they will take you to court and sew your pants off in the good ol USA. My insurance screwed up royal some years back on my home care for IV medication to the tune of $4,000 . I was also informed they dont take payments and my payment of $50 was sent back to me . My insurance carrier told me it was over a year old and to pretty much screw off it was my problem . It was taken to court while i was hospitalised and i lost , i ended up paying the 4 grand but the judge allowed me to make payments which was all i was asking for in the first place but now i have a judgment against me on my permanent credit record. Here in the US insurance is only responsible for bills up to one year , after that is your problem and the debtee has 5 years to get it from your pocket after the insurance denies it . you can claim that is was not sent to you in a resonable time which was my defense but the judge ignored it and rewarded Homecall Pharmisuticals all their money and court costs …. Took me 4 years to pay it off on payments of what i could afford.Aint Capitalism grand 😡

I have a friend that had to go to the ER to save her life, she had a toxicity problem, and with no insurance her bill was more money than she had seen in her lifetime (now mind you I do not begrudge the hospital and doctors their money- they need to pay their bills too and they do keep us alive!!) and because she could not pay it in a certain amount of time, they sent collectors after her. Her credit is ruined for the rest of her life. :/

The health care system really hurts folks that are low income or do not get health benefits through work…

Even when you do have insurance, the 20% they leave you responsible for is still often not something you can pay all in one go, or even a few payments, and then when they refuse to accept payments, there goes your credit.

I am in collections for about $7500 in medical bills and two of those agencies just decided I am not paying fast enough and have taken me to small claims and are now garnishing my wages. Nice huh?

Kyrin

I have a friend that had to go to the ER to save her life, she had a toxicity problem, and with no insurance her bill was more money than she had seen in her lifetime (now mind you I do not begrudge the hospital and doctors their money- they need to pay their bills too and they do keep us alive!!) and because she could not pay it in a certain amount of time, they sent collectors after her. Her credit is ruined for the rest of her life. :/

The health care system really hurts folks that are low income or do not get health benefits through work…

Even when you do have insurance, the 20% they leave you responsible for is still often not something you can pay all in one go, or even a few payments, and then when they refuse to accept payments, there goes your credit.

I am in collections for about $7500 in medical bills and two of those agencies just decided I am not paying fast enough and have taken me to small claims and are now garnishing my wages. Nice huh?

Kyrin

that pisses me off. the government needs to put something in place to regulate those ( cant use word im thing of) as of now they are allowed to self regulate and that is a joke. I had a collector tell me once that next time i went to Hopkins they would only do half what was needed to fix my health since i only paid half , they are actually paid by commision on what they collect and stoop to really nasty means to get it. I told her many ways to please herself then hung up the phone and called the federal trade commision

One, where we told the doctor exactly how to file the insurance claim and they didn’t and now are expecting us to pay (I’m basically ignoring that to see what happens next).

And the other is where we owed more money than we had, they said they wouldn’t take partial payments, so we ignored the problem until the Sheriff came around one day with papers. That wasn’t very long ago, and we are still waiting to hear what happens next, but in the meantime I figured “what the heck” and mailed in a partial payment. And they cashed the check. This at least gives me the opportunity to tell the court that I dispute the amount owed. Probably won’t do me much good and I guess whatever happens it’ll still be on my permanent record.

But my advice would be to always send a partial payment, in the form of a check, to see if they were lying when they said they wouldn’t accept it.

i did send a check it was returned with a void stamp on it , and the number never went through i kept an eye on my account to see if they just did it electronic and sent back the paper as a reciete like Wal-Mart does, but it wasnt and i had to go through the pain in the butt ritual of being screwed by the man

I had to pay for a hospital visit when I worked 3 part-time jobs after I graduated from college. Thank goodness they were nice enough to let me make payments (I paid $100 a month until it was paid off). I fainted at my new job (combination of it being warm, hadn’t eaten and was getting woozy, and was watching a thing/listening to someone speak on catheters – I loathe needles.. can almost feel when people talk about stuff like that where it would be on my body *shudders*, but yet I can watch open brain surgery… I’m just weird!). Also hadn’t eaten much red meat for a couple weeks, so I was a tad low on iron and it finally got to me. They wouldn’t let me not go to the hospital 😕 So, I paid to sit in a bed for a couple of hours and eat a sandwich. I know they meant well, but… At least my boss drove over with me to make sure I was ok 🙂

That was the good case. When I was in high school and was being treated for my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), Mono, and Ebstein-Barr (my immune system was pretty much shot at that point), my parents had to put everything on the credit cards that they couldn’t pay out of pocket. The doctor I went to who got my system back on track uses homeopathy along with regular medicine, a few years before it started being a bit more acceptable. He didn’t go through insurance. You had to file it yourself. Of course not much was accepted by the insurance company (good company, but they just didn’t cover anything like homeopathy at the time – this was over 10 years ago). I know the total was in the thousands. It worked though, after having been poked and prodded, having seen my General Prac. who knew something was wrong, but didn’t know what, a pediatrician who sucked, and a psychiatrist to prove I wasn’t making the whole thing up for attention (who also sucked… I hate being sick or attention from it, why would I fake it to get poked by needles (which I loathe) at every visit?!).

I’m not sure how to fix the healthcare system in the States (while I like some aspects of the Canadian system and what is available in Europe, they aren’t perfect and have their own pros and cons), but a total overhaul is sorely needed.