Help with plan of attack on a hospital bill

Tell them what you are willing to pay.

These threads make me hate our healthcare system more and more.

Dude your wife thought she was having a heart attack and you brought her to the hospital to theoretically save her life and now you want a discount because she didn't have a life threatening issue? Give me a break.

Call them. They will work out a payment plan with you. As long as you make regular payments they will be cool about it.

He did pretty well. I've seen a guy bitch that his $100,000 life saving surgery cost him like $3k after insurance. Like dude, that's cheap as frick.

Anyways OP, most hospitals will extend payment out for a pretty long time with no interest. You can probably get that $2,700 drawn out to two years.

You just have to ask.

Something to consider when you have a final number that you owe.

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Usually hospitals will allow you to make payments

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They're usually interest-free also.

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$2700 for ER visit, labs, and an over night stay, you are getting off pretty cheap.

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thats what Im thinking

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That's b/c they are not real. The hospital billed your insurance their "charge". The insurance ignored that charge and paid the hospital their contracted amount for those services (i.e. your "discount").

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People talk about health care price transparency, especially in this era of high deductible plans. But I don't know how we can ever get there as long as standard practices are as you describe.

We recently used an out of network ER service and learned of this after the fact.

Amount we owe is fairly high when compared to in network providers.

Will discuss amount we owe with out of network provider but don't expect any relief.

Lesson learned and a tad bit lighter in the wallet, is my fault for not checking in advance. The care rendered was fine, what one would expect given reason for visit to the ER.

Time to move along.

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People talk about health care price transparency, especially in this era of high deductible plans. But I don't know how we can ever get there as long as standard practices are as you describe.

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Transparency is a slippery slope. What if the patient decides that three troponins are too expensive? Or if a CBC is not necessary with chest pain, but the etiology of the chest pain is cardiac ischemia due to severe anemia due to an occult GI bleed and demand ischemia? Do doctors let patients dictate their care based on costs? Or do doctors practice evidenced based medicine regardless of costs? Or do the doctors shotgun lab tests to make sure they cover everything to make sure they don't get sued?

First of all, don't start paying anything immediately. The medical facility and insurance company will go back and forth on the bill several times before what you owe is finally worked out. You can then pay on it monthly without any repercussions as long as you pay them something each month. There should be no interest...if you get a call from the hospital pressuring you to pay it all, tell them this is what I can afford.

Unfortunately this info comes from some hard lessons...we got a 3k credit 3 years after my wife's back surgery that we didn't know about because overpaid our bills...I'm glad we got the money back but we needed way more three years earlier.