This is it. This is the US medical scam crystallized. What you need to focus on as a US patient is the "Out-of-pocket maximum/limit." (a number) - which is the yearly maximum you pay as an insured person. Basically, once you enter into an ER you are going PAY this this number. This number is reset every January 1st. So If you have a child January 2nd -- you are in GOOD* shape -- since you will hit your yearly max ("Out-of-pocket maximum/limit.") early in the year -- all other medical is free.
My friends that had a child December 30th, are in bad shape. They pay for yearly "Out-of-pocket maximum/limit" two times: one for the current year and one for the next year.
It ended up going to court and it was judged to be a legitimate bill that I had to pay. That's how bad the system is.
I've been through this sort of thing, and it's ridiculous. Medical bills shouldn't be able to affect one's credit rating.
There is simply no end to the greed of the medical cartel hell bent on subverting market forces.
[1] https://www.the-alliance.org/uploadedfiles/Health_and_Wellne...
The worst was whenever we had our first child. I thought it would just be a single bill or something, but instead I received about 10.
One from the hospital, one from a surgeon, one from the OBGYN, and one from an anesthesiologist. We only met one pediatrician during our stay, but we received a bill from every pediatrician that did a rotation while we were there, so that added four more. One because a nurse working was an independent contractor, and one from the wet nurse who we talked to for like 5 minutes.
Two of them we never actually received bills for because they had an outdated address, so they were sent to collections. We discovered them a year later when we were trying to buy a house. It dinged my wife's credit so bad that we were recommended to not put her on our mortgage application.