Medical Bill Advice?

CV355

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Long story short, I had surprise surgery on 4/1 and the bills just hit. 9 separate bills ranging from $300 to around $3000 each after insurance. Thankfully (I guess?) I hit my out of pocket max for the year. I'm on an extremely-high-deductible HSA plan, and since I just started this job in February, I don't have much built up in the account yet.

What do you typically do in this case? I'd like to have my HSA pull extra each month pre-tax and pay these down automatically, but it's 9 separate bills. Do I pay towards all of them, or do I crush one at a time? Consolidate? Normally I would hold my breath and send in a fat check, but our emergency fund has been beaten to hell over the last 3 years. That's part of why I'm selling the GT500, if anyone wants to buy that beauty ;)
 

Blk04L

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Have you set up a payment plan?
I did that even when I had cash on hand after child birth and you get 5 million bills from everyone who walked into that room.
I would put the biggest term possible on plans, usually you can go years without interest on payment plans, and hit the smaller ones quickly that can't be lumped into the payment plan.
 

CV355

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Have you set up a payment plan?
I did that even when I had cash on hand after child birth and you get 5 million bills from everyone who walked into that room.
I would put the biggest term possible on plans, usually you can go years without interest on payment plans, and hit the smaller ones quickly that can't be lumped into the payment plan.

No, didn't know it was an option. I was afraid I was going to have to take out a personal loan to cover this junk.

I think I have enough in my HSA to kill off some of the smaller ones. The larger ones would be great on a payment plan. Do they get consolidated, or does each one get its own payment plan?

Never had something like this happen before- usually it was one fat bill and a lot of tears signing the check.
 

Blk04L

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No, didn't know it was an option. I was afraid I was going to have to take out a personal loan to cover this junk.

I think I have enough in my HSA to kill off some of the smaller ones. The larger ones would be great on a payment plan. Do they get consolidated, or does each one get its own payment plan?

Never had something like this happen before- usually it was one fat bill and a lot of tears signing the check.

I been through two huge medical expenses the past two years. For the birth of my son I was able to lump most of the costs from the doctors and hospital into one plan, except for a few. Can't recall, but they were quite small after insurance started paying a lot.

For my neurosurgeon visit and all that followed, at a different hospital, everything was lumped into one bill even though there were tons of medical professionals that did bill me and I visited different parts of the hospital during that ordeal.

Both I think offered up to 3 years at zero interest, but not sure if that was their own policy, something to do with Florida health care etc...

Luckily I just wrote a big check for the first one, but the second one I did a year plan just so my "health care" rainy day funds wouldn't take back to back big hits.

Had to call the hospital to get it set up.
I would call the place you visited and see what they can do. I know some places offer discounts depending on your proximity to the facility and income.
 

jdcobra

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Definitely setup a payment plan. That’s what I’m currently doing after insurance has paid its share.

Make sure you negotiate to lowest payment possible, because if you miss just one payment, they’ll come after you pretty hard.
 

Twisted2v

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Review the bills, and appeal anything. Complain to insurance that they didn't cover enough.
 

CV355

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Review the bills, and appeal anything. Complain to insurance that they didn't cover enough.

I don't think I can in this case- I hit the out of pocket limit. Even if they cover 200% as much, I'm still over my limit.
 

jshen

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I agree with above poster- Hospitals and doctors are willing to work with you and even for less money. Hell, here in Savannah, with the nightly shooting war with the gangs.. you can bet they don't pay a thing! Hospitals write it off depending on conscience people like you...
 

GodStang

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Go online or I call and setup payment plans for each. usually like $45-$65 a month for a long ass time. Then when one gets low enough (under like $200) I pay it off.
 

GodStang

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Definitely setup a payment plan. That’s what I’m currently doing after insurance has paid its share.

Make sure you negotiate to lowest payment possible, because if you miss just one payment, they’ll come after you pretty hard.


I have not seen that. Our insurance is so bad I usually wait like 90 days past do to setup a payment plan to let them get their stuff together. They just send a letter saying hey this is what you owe. Never had one come after me.
 

CV355

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Go online or I call and setup payment plans for each. usually like $45-$65 a month for a long ass time. Then when one gets low enough (under like $200) I pay it off.

I could do that for sure. Especially if it's pre-tax money that I never see anyways.

Still sucks. Right before the surprise surgery, my wife and I were talking about how it felt like the bad luck streak had finally taken a break.


Make sure you negotiate to lowest payment possible, because if you miss just one payment, they’ll come after you pretty hard.

I'll give it a shot. And believe me I know... My last normal doctor visit in February had a $10 copay. I paid it at the office. Got a bill for $10, called, said it was paid. A month later a collection agency called, looking for $10. I said "they have you chase down $10? Besides, I paid that already. Here's the date and time of the transaction."

I guess it's the "responsible adult" curse.
 
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nxhappy

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our healthcare is the biggest ****ing joke, I swear. My daughter was in the NICU for 2 weeks....my checkbook got hit HARD even with so called "great" coverage. **** these assholes.

Anyway ....my advise, just save up a chunk of money, and hit it as hard as you can. As long as you are paying SOMETHING they can't turn you over to collections.
 

My94GT

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Went through similar, had an injury then got the flu and wound up back to back weeks in the hospital just days prior to insurance going active. I called and set up payment plans and was paying anywhere from 50-100 a month on each individual bill per month.

Like stated above health care providers are just happy to have someone that’s willing to pay so they are generally very flexible with payment plans.
 

02reaper

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In our case we just had a child and insurance covered most of it. The rest of it we asked them for a one time cash payout and what ended up originally costing us about 4k out of pocket went down to a little over 1k. They write off so much and the bills are super confusing between what insurance says they pay and what the hospital says you owe vs what insurance pays. In our case my wife stayed on top of them and basically aggravated the crap out of them to get them to write off most of it.
 

Stateguy

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In our case we just had a child and insurance covered most of it. The rest of it we asked them for a one time cash payout and what ended up originally costing us about 4k out of pocket went down to a little over 1k. They write off so much and the bills are super confusing between what insurance says they pay and what the hospital says you owe vs what insurance pays. In our case my wife stayed on top of them and basically aggravated the crap out of them to get them to write off most of it.

This! We recently had my son in speech therapy that was supposed to be fully covered by our insurance only to find out 3 months into his therapy that it was only 30% covered. We called and verified that it was covered before we started and they did a 180 on what was stated. I screwed up because it was all verbal over the phone. When we received the bill it was over 1500$ and after some back and forth over a few months I asked for a one lump sum and it came out to 600$.


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CV355

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I guess my confusion is over how many separate bills came in. If they're all going separate places, does that mean each one has to be negotiated separately? Because... damn...
 

02reaper

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I guess my confusion is over how many separate bills came in. If they're all going separate places, does that mean each one has to be negotiated separately? Because... damn...

I think they do it on purpose to confuse you. A lot of our bills were for the same exact thing, but each bill for the same thing was priced differently. I told my wife that it was a big scheme to try to scam someone out of money. Atleast that's my take on it. If you hold off on paying them long enough while arguing with them, they will eventually settle on a lot less than they say you owe.
 

CV355

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I think they do it on purpose to confuse you. A lot of our bills were for the same exact thing, but each bill for the same thing was priced differently. I told my wife that it was a big scheme to try to scam someone out of money. Atleast that's my take on it. If you hold off on paying them long enough while arguing with them, they will eventually settle on a lot less than they say you owe.

I might try that. Two are still pending insurance handling, so I need to wait until those are complete anyways.

But, since my out of pocket limit has been hit, I may start scheduling up all of the other crap that I needed to get checked out and take advantage of the opportunity.
 

_Snake_

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I’m confused. If you reached your max out of pocket, why are you coming out of pocket?
 

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