Hospital Sent Me To Collections.

[dscurlock]

a few months ago I had surgery, and even the insurance company told me it may take 3-6 months for the hosp
to get paid in full; Right off the bat, the hosp wanted their entire co-pay, and by their estimation was around $3k...
in other words, the hosp wanted me to pay them whatever, then the insurance could pay me back.
(I declined to go that route; I simply felt I was being bullied....)

The hosp just received another insurance payment not even 2 weeks ago; not only that, I have also
been sending in payments over the last 4 months waiting for insurance to catch up....

Yesterday, I rec'd a notice that the hosp sent me to collections....

The last couple of years have been rough; I have $1,000's in medical bills,
and I have never ignored any of them; and only one medical provider is
acting as if they have not got any payments or heard from me at all.....

Hospital is certainly being aggressive; rather then thanking me for
the payments they are getting; they send me to collections.

This is not a favor system; I cant do favors for one provider
and ignore the rest; With limited funds; They are treated equally....

[sleepless2]

I ran into something similar a while back, in the past the Hospital always took payments and were very nice about it. My wife ended up having emergency surgery last year and I called them after and said can I get back on the payment plan. I was told they no longer did that and they could refer me to a credit company that would work with me. It was capitol1 at 18% - Just like a loan- I continued to send the 300 a month and they sent me to collections, They kept asking and I kept telling them this is what I had and this is what I would be sending. 6mo later it was paid and they quit calling.

[dscurlock]

I ran into something similar a while back, in the past the Hospital always took payments and were very nice about it. My wife ended up having emergency surgery last year and I called them after and said can I get back on the payment plan. I was told they no longer did that and they could refer me to a credit company that would work with me. It was capitol1 at 18% - Just like a loan- I continued to send the 300 a month and they sent me to collections, They kept asking and I kept telling them this is what I had and this is what I would be sending. 6mo later it was paid and they quit calling.

I know they all want their money right on the spot, not all of us are big shot
ceo's or have high end federal insurance or something; Most likely I
will do the same thing; I am still waiting on a 2013 tax refund; If I
get it before the hosp is paid off, then I will use that toward the hosp.
They may not like it; But as long as I am working, then I will
do the best that I can in paying them off, and I am going to write
a letter to the collection service, and explain just that...
take it or leave it; you are still going to get paid off..

there is one hosp bill that I flat out refused to pay...I went to the
ER thinking my insur would pay something; my insurance paid
nothing, and the hosp sent me a bill for $1700 for seeing a
doctor for like 5 minutes. If you are not going to be fair and
just, then do not expect me to pay anything. If they had informed
me upfront, then I would have walked....

[justbroke]

This is actually fairly new but common practice for larger "medical systems" that use statistical analytics. I was in a forum where a doctor said that they would run a type of "soft" credit inquiry (not required to disclose) and combined with data such as your zip code, your job type, the type of service and several other factors, they could determine if you were going to pay quickly or slowly. The people that were in the "slow pay" category were sent to collections after 30 days. The quick payers, even if they didn't pay in 30 days, were not sent to collections for some time.

(I have only seen this with hospitals and not general hospital systems' general practice offices.)

Welcome to the new economy.

[dscurlock]

This is actually fairly new but common practice for larger "medical systems" that use statistical analytics. I was in a forum where a doctor said that they would run a type of "soft" credit inquiry (not required to disclose) and combined with data such as your zip code, your job type, the type of service and several other factors, they could determine if you were going to pay quickly or slowly. The people that were in the "slow pay" category were sent to collections after 30 days. The quick payers, even if they didn't pay in 30 days, were not sent to collections for some time.

(I have only seen this with hospitals and not general hospital systems' general practice offices.)

Welcome to the new economy.

I looked over the bill again, and compared to last month, and the
hosp completely left of a section of charges; Those charges is what
was sent to collections, and among those charges are payments....

Why would a hosp send half of my bill to collections?

[justbroke]

Why would a hosp send half of my bill to collections?

Even worse, why would a medical provider send a bill to the insurer (and the patient) 6 months late? I don't know. I have had issues as well. I was lucky in that I had one bill retracted after showing that my doctor misbilled it to the insurer and that they billed it 6 months after the fact. The insurer rejected the claim as both untimely and not-a-network provider.

[dscurlock]

Even worse, why would a medical provider send a bill to the insurer (and the patient) 6 months late? I don't know. I have had issues as well. I was lucky in that I had one bill retracted after showing that my doctor misbilled it to the insurer and that they billed it 6 months after the fact. The insurer rejected the claim as both untimely and not-a-network provider.

I will call the hosp and find out...
the worse that can happen is that I will be sending
payments to the hosp and to the collection service
for the portion they decided to send them; I guess
I will have to call the collector and setup payment
terms with them also; It is rough when you have
1000's in debt, and you have to try and make
them all happy; doing the best I can...

[justbroke]

I certainly wish you luck. Unexpected and large medical bills can really cause financial issues. I'm now on a high deductible with HSA and have only just started to build my "self-insured" (read HSA) account. I'm hoping to have $12K in that account for emergencies. It will take me two years to get to $12K (based on the tax laws that limit me to $6K a year to put aside -- tax free).

[dscurlock]

I certainly wish you luck. Unexpected and large medical bills can really cause financial issues. I'm now on a high deductible with HSA and have only just started to build my "self-insured" (read HSA) account. I'm hoping to have $12K in that account for emergencies. It will take me two years to get to $12K (based on the tax laws that limit me to $6K a year to put aside -- tax free).

Apparently I did not have a payment plan setup with the hosp; even though they were getting
payments; the computer decided to send one portion of the hosp bill over to collections...
For the hosp balance, I am now setup to send them payments; Now I just need to
call collections, and setup payment terms with them, then it should be fine...
at least for the time being....

We were doing somewhat ok until this rush on medical services comes into
play; It just goes to show, you never know when the unexpected will happen.
and medical services are by no means cheap, even a 10% co-pay can
turn out to be quite expensive as they can add up quite quickly.....

and just two days ago, I had to make an ER run to the dentist and
get a root canal; no warning or anything, right out of the blue
I was headed to the dentist in pain, and that co-pay was $225....

no 2nd car this year...
maybe next year...

[joshuagraham]

Thank goodness our great President pushed through a system in which just about everyone* can get affordable health coverage - so that these horror stories will be virtually a thing of the past (at least for folks who don't foolishly pass up the opportunity to get the coverage.)

(*) Folks under 100% of poverty income in states that haven't expanded Medicaid, and some folks who have a spouse/oarent who is offered "affordable" coverage for the individual, but not his family, are not allowed to get the tax credit to make the coverage affordable; this is something that one side of the political aisle would like to fix this but the other side is inscrutable in its opposition.

[joshuagraham]

I certainly wish you luck. Unexpected and large medical bills can really cause financial issues. I'm now on a high deductible with HSA and have only just started to build my "self-insured" (read HSA) account. I'm hoping to have $12K in that account for emergencies. It will take me two years to get to $12K (based on the tax laws that limit me to $6K a year to put aside -- tax free).

I'm wondering if an HSA is confiscatable in Chapter 7.

[joshuagraham]

... you never know when the unexpected will happen.

I'll second that! For many years I & my employer then was paying for my health coverage that I barely used. Then I got cancer. I had 100% HMO coverage and everything associated with the cancer diagnosis cost me the $10 co-pay.

[LadyInTheRed]

I'm wondering if an HSA is confiscatable in Chapter 7.

It depends on where you live and in many places there is no settled law. The first thing to look at is whether there is an exemption to cover it. If not, the question is whether it is part of the BK estate. In the 8th Circuit, they are part of the BK estate. It apparently hasn't been decided in other districts, so it would depend on the trustee and, if a debtor wants to fight a trustee who agrees with the 8th Circuit, the judge.

http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-i-keep-hsa-msa-funds-chapter-7-bankruptcy.html

HSAs were created in 2003. The Bankruptcy Code hasn't been updated to address them one way or the other.

[joshuagraham]

It depends on where you live and in many places there is no settled law. The first thing to look at is whether there is an exemption to cover it. If not, the question is whether it is part of the BK estate. In the 8th Circuit, they are part of the BK estate. It apparently hasn't been decided in other districts, so it would depend on the trustee and, if a debtor wants to fight a trustee who agrees with the 8th Circuit, the judge.

http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-i-keep-hsa-msa-funds-chapter-7-bankruptcy.html

HSAs were created in 2003. The Bankruptcy Code hasn't been updated to address them one way or the other.

It would seem that the conservatives in Congress who are pushing these HSAs would amend the bankruptcy code to make it exempt.

[LadyInTheRed]

It would seem that the conservatives in Congress who are pushing these HSAs would amend the bankruptcy code to make it exempt.

You would think!

There actually was a bill in the House in 2013, but it never came out of committee: https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-...ouse-bill/2194

Among other things it "Amends the bankruptcy code to treat HSAs as tax-exempt individual retirement accounts (IRAs) for purposes of exempting them from creditor claims."

It also had something for the insurance companies: "Repeals provisions of PPACA that impose annual limitations on deductibles for health plans offered in the small group market."