If you really did just get the bill it will be several months (and several more copies of the bill sent to you) before a final bill would show up that would indicate the account is "PAST DUE" and heading for collections.
IANAL but you can safely wait for the itemized bill.
In the future to save on costs, you might try to find a 24-hour Urgent Care instead of full-fledged ER. Unfortunately the level of equipment that they have to keep in a full ER means just having someone in a bed costs them a lot of money, even if they are just swabbing your throat for a strep test.
Sure, just like you can't charge extra for using a credit card in California as payment in most scenarios (you can get a cash discount though). There may not be late fees, but the hospital will absolutely offer to settle for a hefty discount if you pay ASAP.
By the time you get something claiming "PAST DUE" the hospital may be less willing to negotiate.
Who said anything about getting nothing? If the hospital sells your debt to a collection agency they get something. If the hospital deals with it in house they can act like UVA[1] and sue you to garnish your wages or take out a lien on your property. Playing chicken with the hospital billing department is a bad way to deal with medical debt.
1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/uva-has-ruined-us-heal...
It'd be far more effective to aggressively regulate hospital billing, wouldn't it?
You should look into the efficiency of medicare and medicaid if you're really worried about this. It might put some of your fears to rest.
We were broke at the time we found out about the pregnancy and memories of the first two years of my boy's life are largely dominated by this kafka-esque nightmare that took time and security away from our family life. I refused to pay a cent until what we were told was honored, my thinking being any sort of payment may legitimize it.
Eventually I didn't hear back from the hospital about our latest contestation for two months after confirming their receipt of the documentation (about a four hour process each submission, always new fax numbers, life-wasting hold times to confirm receipt of said documentation, transfers to other agents and departments, then a promise of giving a decision in a few weeks, often just reprinting the last non-descript document they used in the previous round without any real detail). Decided to just do nothing and ignore it as long as I didn't get contacted again and got everything ready to go to court if someone ever decided to pursue it against us again. The documentation I've been holding from the ordeal is 60 pounds of paper.
I still have no idea what the true status is, but it hasn't shown up on credit checks and our boy is now 5 years old.
I could not find anyone in various governmental institutions to even look into the matter and the lawyers I talked to said the outlook of winning was grim and would have cost a lot of money on top of that to even pursue it. Our insurance company [Anthem] posted a $17 billion profit that year. The hospital had the highest gross profit of any hospital in our city and the surrounding area at $80.4 million declared. Both entities make so much money they give away individual debts amounting in the tens of thousands of dollars for pennies (maybe ours included?).
It's an absolutely depraved system and my point is maybe be careful showing good faith to an entity trying to screw you lest it be taken as consent.
The $42k is a fantasy figure which they collect approximately 0% of the time. It's the easiest $42k you ever saved.
At this stage, it seems like the US is the “land of the free”, whereby “freedom” is defined as the ability to freely exploit everyone.
I agree, though, the masses are exploited (us included), and it’s troubling.
50 years ago people had the same loyalty towards their companies, and look where that got US manufacturing workers. nowadays you'd be nuts to expect to stick with a company for 10 years. get yours and get out: others be damned.
so it shall be with citizenship. as more and more citizens have more and more power to up and leave, or work outside the confines of the US without too much hassle, questions such as "what on earth are we still doing here?" will be asked, at first in whispers (as they are now), later in louder volumes.
where things go from there, anyone knows.
All medical imaging I've had done has had pricing given up front showing what they where going to bill the insurance company and what the insurance company was going to pay and what I'd have to pay.
My non-emergency visits have a $40 copay up front.
Only the nightmare cases get talked about.
The number one cause of bankruptcy in the United States:
> "medical expenses"[0]
The average amount charged for an ER visit in the United States:
> between 2008 and 2017, the average price of hospital ER visits rose 135 percent, from $393 to $924[1]
The cost of an ambulance ride in the United States:
> $164/mile[2]
And make sure to compound the monetary cost with the cost of people avoiding medical care out of fear and unknowns surrounding the actual monetary cost.
[0] take your pick of any study done by anyone
[1] https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/average-cost-o...
[2] https://www.consumerreports.org/consumerist/164-per-mile-sur...
The OOP is still averaging under 300, again, not the horror stories in this thread.
Problems exist, but it seems that only a small % of providers are horribly abusing the system.
(of course a small % across over 300 million people is still a lot of harm!)
I don't live in the US and I'm not American so perhaps I'm missing some information.
If the average ER visit was 5K of unknown miscellaneous charges than that would indicate nationwide maliciousness on the part of nearly all hospitals. If only a small # of hospitals are engaging in that level of unfair billing, then they can possibly be investigated one by one.
It is the same thing as "we have thousands servers that are crashing at random multiple times a day" versus "we have a bunch of servers that are low on RAM, and a couple servers that crash 5 times a day."
Neither scenario is good to be in, but it is possible to get a hand on the latter scenario, while in the first scenario a "burn it all down and rewrite" fix might be appropriate.
Why would health care be any different?
Otherwise most people don't want to leave their friends and family
Note: not defending the horrible system. Only suggesting that most people using their company provided insurance probably don't run into these issues.
I don't know how it's possible, but our healthcare system has been getting worse every year. Even simple stuff like refilling scripts has become Kafka Meets Keystone Kops. The insurer has interjected itself into every single transaction, second guessing everything, adding ever more hoops to jump thru.
It's a wonder that we even bother with doctors any more, since the insurers apparently know better than my doctors.
Things are so bad, I wouldn't even know where to start if anyone wanted to fix things.
Better to just start over.
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/health/2017/05/...
I am also a British citizen, so I'm at least waiting to see how this whole Brexit thing shakes out.
Get on the phone, try to keep cool, but realize you're probably going to yell at some poor customer service rep at some point. Apologize, keep going and get the full bill before you agree to pay anything. Then you gotta do the same thing with the full bill on ever bullshit charge, over and over again.
Honestly, how the fuck can they admit you and treat you and then bill you without telling you what the prices are up front? That's fucking madness right there. Imagine having to agree to having car or bicycle service without an estimate? Imagine the total cost being $2000 over the estimate? Would people pay? Of course not; it's worth it at that point to call a lawyer.
It shouldn’t cost that much in the first place. You shouldn’t need to shop around for health care, and you shouldn’t be bankrupted by an emergency. Why people aren’t marching through the streets right now is beyond me.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/uva-has-ruined-us-heal...
This year I had sepsis and had a two week stay in hospital - o dread to think what that would have cost
I paid $850 at the ER and today I received another bill for $850.
The only thing on the Bill just says
> "Charges": $11,680 > "Adjustmnets: $9,980
I just got off the phone with them and they say that it will take 10 business days to receive an itemized bill. However, that means the itemized bill will be delivered after the current bill is due.
How are they going to charge somebody $1700 without an itemization?
Furthermore, I am expecting another bill from the ER doctor that saw me because they bill separately and are not covered by insurance. The ER legally cant tell you if the doctor or the hospital accepts your insurance. Thats so crazy.
My wife was absolutely mortified. In brazil I never carried insurance but going to the ER I just had to pay R$400 flat fee for a private hospital. Anything else for tests they would give me the prices up front.
My wife about started screaming when the woman brought in the credit card machine while I was still in pain in the ER hospital bed. It was so embarrassing.
All this is with the top insurance my company (a ~$500 million startup) offers and to make it worse it happened when I was on a company mandated trip.