Medical bills included in BK

[woohoogirl]

I started planning my BK in September 07. I had some medical tests done in October. I made one payment on it. In January 08, I had to have the tests repeated to show any changes. I listed both of these on my creditor list I gave my atty. I have insurance and they paid a big chunk of the bills leaving me with about $1400 due to the hospital. Has anybody had any experience with medical debt not being discharged?

[Minnymouth]

If they are both listed on your creditor matrix after you filed then no problem...... both should be discharged......

Any tests that are run after you file, then become your responsibility and probably would not be allowed to be included....

[phoenyx]

I started planning my BK in September 07. I had some medical tests done in October. I made one payment on it. In January 08, I had to have the tests repeated to show any changes. I listed both of these on my creditor list I gave my atty. I have insurance and they paid a big chunk of the bills leaving me with about $1400 due to the hospital. Has anybody had any experience with medical debt not being discharged?

I agree with Minnymouth that they should be discharged as long as they were done before you file.

I wanted to mention, however, that if you would be concerned about being able to see those medical providers again, you might want to contact them in advance to see what will happen in the future. Many doctors offices and hospitals have low-income or financial assistance programs. If you're filing through a bankruptcy attorney, definatley ask him whether you should contact them at all about this first.

For any medical debt that is discharged, they can't seek repayment after your discharge. However, in some cases, medical care providers refuse seeing a patient who discharged debt to them unless the balance is paid. They aren't actually seeking repayment for the discharged debt, but excercising their right to turn away patients. I've most often heard about this from individual doctors offices and dentists. I don't know how often this happens.

They can't (legally) turn you away for life threatening issues.

Whether this will happen will completely depend opon the common practices of the doctors/hospitals that you see.

I'm including some medical bills in my upcoming Chapter 7, and I've been contacting everyone in advance to see what their policies on seeing me in the future will be.

There's an individual doctors office that I've been talking to about reducing the balance to me substantially, to see if I can work something out with them so I don't lose them. My insurance didn't cover these services, so the initial doctors office bill didn't even reduce the charges to the allowed amounts by the insurance. I'm hoping they will at least reduce the bill to that amount for me.

The hospital that I'm including in my Chapter 7 stated that they would see me on future visits despite the discharge, if it was a medically necessary visit. They wouldn't elaborate on what medically necessary meant. I'll have to wait and see.