42.9 million Americans have unpaid medical bills

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP-Excite


By JOSH BOAK

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly 20 percent of U.S. consumers — 42.9 million people — have unpaid medical debts, according to a new report by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The findings suggest that many Americans are being trapped by debt because they are confused by the notices they get from hospitals and insurance companies about the cost of treatment. As a result, millions of Americans may be surprised to find they are stuck with lower credit scores, making it harder for them to borrow to buy a home or an automobile.

"When people fall ill and end up at the hospital with unexpected bills, far too often they have entered into a financial maze," CFPB director Richard Cordray said in a speech to be delivered Thursday in Oklahoma City.

On average, a person with only overdue medical debt owes $1,766. Someone with unpaid medical bills and other sources of debt — possibly credit cards or back taxes — owes an average of $5,638. More than half of all debt on credit reports stems from medical expenses.

FULL story at link.



FILE - In this Jan. 9, 2013 file photo, an injured passenger of a New Jersey ferry is loaded into an ambulance, in New York. Nearly 20 percent of U.S. consumers _42.9 million people _ have unpaid medical debts, according to a new report released Thursday, Dec. 11, 2014 by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The findings suggest that many Americans lack the financial resources to pay for health emergencies _ and that the notices from hospitals and insurance companies about the cost of treatment are confusing and baffling. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)


Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20141211/us-medical-debt-1b013c230b.html

[inanna]

1. I feel truly blessed to live in Canada

when I read reports like this.

[yeoman6987]

2. I am annoyed that a ding is on my credit

Report for 50 bucks. I did pay it, but it is there for 7 years. The problem is the billing is a mess. You receive so many from different offices that it is easy to miss one. I still don't remember getting one, but when a credit company called, I apologized and paid it immediately. Of course he said it was only on the credit report for 60 days???? Two years later it is still there.

[closeupready]

4. Some say that your experience is why it's unwise to talk on the phone.

Due to the fact that if push comes to shove, it's strictly he said/she said. That is, if you needed to present evidence of an agreement or understanding of some sort, a copy of correspondence would be strong enough to present to a court that such an agreement existed (and if you sent the letter with a check, and the check was later cashed, then that implies their agreement to the terms).

[yeoman6987]

5. Good point!

Another reason advanced technology can be negative. Not saying phone in general but just overall tech.

[Xyzse]

14. Yep, it does that. It's annoying.

[nichomachus]

15. Agreed -- and I'm on Medicare

But Medicare, while it's good, isn't the paradise that many people think it is. I have regular Medicare with a supplement plan.

I still have to deal with multiple entities and regularly get involved in mixups. I went to urgent care because I had a fall. The did an x-ray. The urgent care place submitted a bill, as did the doctor, as did the x-ray facility (which is in the same building, as did the radiologist. Whoever submitted the bill, forgot to put "Jr." after my name. Medicare refused to pay the bill. I was unaware of all this. Then, out of the blue, I got a demand notice from the x-ray place saying that they were sending me to a collection agency if I didn't pay them $1,800 within a week.

It took about three hours on the phone with Medicare, the x-ray facility, and their billing office -- which is 1,500 miles away.

[hobbit709]

3. i had a hospital try to bill me once because they screwed up.

They sent it to the previous insurance company I was with instead of the current one at the time. Evidently their billing computer and their ER computer did not communicate.
When I got the bill because it was rejected by the insurance company I was no longer with, i noticed that right away.
I called the hospital and told them they sent it to the wrong insurance and if they sent it to the right one it should be paid.
"We don't do that sir, you will have to submit it"
My response was "So I have to do YOUR legwork because YOU screwed up?"
"Yes"
"Then I will submit a bill to you for my time that will be equal to or greater than what you want from me"
"We won't pay it"
"Then I will turn the debt over to a collection agency just like you are threatening to do"
I said "You have 3 choices. 1. You can resubmit the bill to the proper insurance company. 2. You can have me do the work and bill you for my time. 3. You can write it off right now."

2 weeks later I got a statement from them saying the right insurance company had paid them.

[Major Nikon]

8. I had a similar situation

The hospital completely fucked up the coding they sent to the insurance company. When the insurance company refused to pay, the hospital told me I was still responsible for the charges and threatened to turn me over to collections. Had I paid them, they never would have fixed their fuckup. I got tired of dealing with underlings and started sending letters to the hospital president return receipt. After the 3rd letter the problem was fixed.

The people who hound you to pay bills have zero interest in fixing any problems. Their only interest is in getting money out of you.

[csziggy]

6. They make the bills and notices confusing on purpose!

And they don't allow any time to let the insurance company sort it out.

The year I had both my knees replaced I tried to set up a spreadsheet to reconcile the hospital and doctors bills, what the insurance paid, how much the insurance allotted to deductible and how much the insurance allotted to out of pocket. The last was because some of the providers were not in network so my out of pocket was considerable.

No matter how hard I tried to match up the bills I got with the statements from the insurance company the figures never once reconciled. The bill from the doctor would be for say $23,000 and that the insurance had paid $17,000 and I owed $5000. The statement from the insurance company would say that doctor billed them for $30,000, the insurance company got a deduction of $10,000, paid $18,000 so I was supposed to owe $2000. It made no sense at all. Then there was the confusion between my regular insurance and the hospital supplemental and what it would cover.

When I called some of the billing offices, they told me to wait until I got the third or fourth bill before I paid - that they would bill the insurance company two or three times before they gave up on getting paid everything the insurance company would cover and then they would discount the remainder and bill it to me. That didn't work - some of the doctors billing offices sent the bills to collection companies 30 days after the first bill was sent out.

With having knee replacements seven weeks apart, then a case of pneumonia, then carpal tunnel surgery, I spent a year sorting out bills, getting the insurance company to pay bills, dealing with past due bills, getting refund checks for overpaid bills, and making sure everything had been paid. I'm sure I paid more out of pocket than I should have - but there is no way to figure it out.

I'm lucky - I have the resources to cover the part the insurance companies didn't. It still put a huge ding in our finances that I'm still trying to catch up with. Without those resources, I would owe well over $10,000 in medical expenses. As it is, there is that much less in my retirement savings. so my future income is reduced.

[llmart]

21. This is the real crime of insurance companies today......

Their billing system is so convoluted and ridiculous that most people can't figure out what the hell is covered, what was paid, what is truly owed. Tell me why this can't be simplified? I have always figured that if I have trouble figuring it out (and I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person who has worked in a benefits office at a major corporation), then what must the average citizen do? Quite possibly they overpay more often than underpay, and maybe that's exactly what they want.

[csziggy]

22. Plus all this complex system does is add to the cost of healthcare

The doctor I had for most of my adult life had a single doctor office. He had two nurses, a physician assistant and a nurse practitioner in the practice with him. For office staff he had two receptionists, one or two file clerks - and six to eight insurance clerks. It was ridiculous.

At one point there was a complete screw up with our insurance - my husband got BC/BS of California through his employer and the BC/BS clerk was sending the bills to BC/BS of Florida. It took me hours and hours to sort it out, more hours from the clerk and the doctor had to wait for months to get paid after all the expense in paying an insurance clerk to get the insurance companies to cooperate.

My doctor semi-retired and joined an HMO. He still practices medicine but only works a few days a week, doesn't have to deal with insurance and leaves all the business crap to the HMO manager. He doesn't like it as much as he did as an independent doctor, but he just couldn't afford to provide affordable medical care and support the huge staff just to get money out of the insurance companies.

Insurance is a racket and the doctors have had to join the criminal class and play along to get paid.

[HockeyMom]

7. My daughter had this problem

Oh, she had health insurance through her job. Problem was that a 23 year old making $11/hour didn't have thousands of dollars sitting around somewhere to pay the deductibles and copays. Neither did I. Collection agency came after her. They even came after ME, but she was over 21. I told them to leave me alone or I would contact an attorney. They garnisheed her wages and at her income it took 10 years for the money to be paid off. BTW, I advised her not to have the back surgery in the first place. It did not even help her, and to this day she still has back problems. All that pain, suffering, aggravation, and money for nothing.

Yes, just having health insurance is no guarantee you will not get into debt from medical bills.

[hunter]

9. Even with "good" insurance...

... any hospitalization results in a shitstorm of bills and paperwork which is difficult or impossible to deal with because, duh, a serious injury or disease has disrupted all other aspects of one's life too -- work, family, everything.

It's a sick joke, but I say never bring a credit card to the E.R. or hospital admissions. My wife and I did. A couple of missed payments and the interest rate shot up past 20%, then to 30%, and then, just about when you are ready to declare bankruptcy, they "forgive" a chunk of that debt (which was mostly tacked on fees and interest in the first place...) and send you an IRS 1099-C form (Cancellation of Debt) to complicate your life further.

The healthcare system in the U.S.A. sucks, and based on outcomes it's not even the "best in the world." Even the very wealthy and those with expensive "platinum" insurance can receive inappropriate, dangerous, care because there are so many predators in the business, from insurance companies, finance companies, hospital executives, pharmaceutical companies, even doctors and surgeons.

Whether one is wealthy or not, finding good medical care is not a trivial task, and it's always necessary to have a healthy advocate watching out for you in bad times. This is one of the reasons I'm such a strong advocate of gay marriage. Too many parents will use a serious illness as a means of clawing their way back into the lives of LGBT children they rejected, and exclude the child's chosen life partner.

[turbinetree]

10. Public Option

This the main reason we need a PUBLIC OPTION.
We are collectively being discriminated against based on credit worthiness for unpaid bills.
While at the same time we are trained in the dogma that we need credit to purchase or have a service rendered at a lower cost, this is absolute crap.
But, we have and if the new right wing lobbyist house bill goes forward, and I realize this is off the subject being discussed, but if you have savings to pay for your bills, the big banks want us to back stop them with our savings which are our insured FDIC funds (up to $250,000 dollars) to be used to pay-off bad criminal acts on the Wall Street Ponzi Scheme, which is now protected in the Dodd-Frank Law from the derivatives market, when that money could be use to pay down on emergency debt.
Lets not forget you cannot declare bankruptcy on school debt, and you have to really jump through hoops to declare bankruptcy and they can have your unemployment insurance or income garnished to pay off the debt , and then if you have problems the phone calls and threats
We need a Public Option, and until we do, we are going to see more and more citizens in this proverbial debt crisis.

[nichomachus]

13. This is the reason we need single-payer universal health care -- don't settle for anything less

Every other industrialized country has it.

[Bradical79]

11. *raises hand*

Thousands of dollars of debt related to medical bills here. No mistakes, just some pre-Obamacare issues and exceptions given to my insurance company that delayed implementation of some parts of the law. I'm broke and just can't pay. Bills outpaced my income.

[Xyzse]

12. I actually had some for a while.

Problem was, I didn't even realize that I had some.

I mean, I almost never get my mail, and I pay each time I go to the Doctor's. So, I assumed everything was copacetic, till I went to the Doctor and was told that I owed a little less than 5 bones. So glad I had the money at the time.

[Quackers]

16. I'm in that group!

At least I'm not alone......that's something, I guess.

[MillennialDem]

17. Here's an epic one for ya

Pre-op appointment for trans related surgery. Chest Xray, blood tests, etc...

Get the bill from the doctor's office: insurance denied.

Call insurance company: we'll pay it, just get the doctor's office to provide this code, that code, and their TIN (taxpayer ID number). I call the doctor's office and person on the phone says "uh we don't normally give that out, but I'll get soandso to call you back". Soandso, the manager or whoever he is calls back and leaves a voicemail stating the same thing.

So fuck em, if they won't give me their TIN so my insurance can pay them they can pound sand. I'll just deal with fucked credit for the next 6-7 years (got a mortgage at 4% 3 years ago, so no real need for credit right now).

[MillennialDem]

18. This is why we need single payer now

[HoosierCowboy]

19. Embezzlement

Was charged to a staff member at a local clinic for stealing payments. The staffer was using a check reader to process payments and sending them to their own bank account instead of the clinics.
It took two years for the clinic to finally catch up with what was going on, after enraging most of their patients. The staffer had quit and moved away before they were caught. Also it was found out later the staffer was selling CDL's and forging the Doctors signature. Think about that the next time a semi comes up behind you on the freeway.

Stole and gambled away almost $250,000. Yet the clinic persisted in hassling it's patients probably thinking the patients were the deadbeats.

and still, one can't get a straight explanation of their billing.

The dysfunctional US healthcare system ought to be the prime motivator for staying healthy, because the only outcome you will get is bankruptcy.

[MisterP]

20. easy solution! just garnish everyone's wages so the Beast gets fed