Medical bill?

Posted by admin
Umma K asked:


Two months ago, I went to the ER because I thought I had appendicitis. I declined most of the tests because I had no insurance, but opted only for the CT scan without contrast because it was the most reliable.

I got a bill in the mail today for $13,000. My husband and I don’t have nearly that amount. We’re both still students and are living on an extremely tight budget.

If I talk to the billing department at the hospital, will they reduce the bill? Will they hunt us down if we don’t pay? Also, is it better to get it over with and pay the money or wait in hopes that they will write it off?
We really, really cannot afford this.
I didn’t have appendicitis, by the way, so the 13K is for a CT scan & a blood panel.

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    • This entry was posted on Monday, March 15th, 2010 at 5:14 am and is filed under Finance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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    One Response to “Medical bill?”

    1. heyteach Says:
      March 16th, 2010 at 12:08 am

      You can thank the special deals handed to the large insurers for your being given a RIDICULOUS bill.

      You can NOT afford to duck this bill–it will follow you and hospitals are getting more and more aggressive with their collections.

      As the bill is completely outrageous, your first step is to talk to the finances department and see what they will do to lower it. Make sure to inquire about “charity care” given your limited incomes.

      You may also want to check out this site:

      Note this new wrinkle in predatory collections:

      IF you can have insurance, even only catastrophic coverage, you MUST. If you think this is bad, you have see NOTHING yet, my dear. I’d advise checking into an HSA:

      Use something like ehealthinsurance.com to search for an HSA.

      BTW, if you’d like to read a sensible plan for US health care, check out the PDF at this site:

      Please do look at the links provided. You were lucky this time–it’s getting far worse and if you needed surgery, you can rest assured you’d have been looking at $50K easily for the surgeon and hospital. We MUST address this insanity before it’s too late.