Pay bill through HSA. Get second bill, pay again through HSA. Then get collections letter for the same bill, HSA account statement says bill was paid twice. Fax this over to collections, they say OK, this is just internal collections so this wont hit your credit. Couple months later I get an actual collections letter so now it has hit my credit. Explain the situation to no avail, offer to pay a third time to get it off my credit, they won't do a pay for delete.

Not to mention the nonsense where a bill from a hospital is entirely indecipherable and any attempt to figure it out involves hours of 800 number hell that usually leaves you right where you started.

Thanks, Obama.

Went to dentist

Had root cancel

Paid $8

Tooth is better

went to dentist

got two fillings

got a bill for $800

insurance would only cover so much, and they charged massively more than the regional average

told them to shove their $800 bill up their ass and ended up paying about $200

Relative of mine got a kidney stone. I've never had one, but I guess the pain is so brutal it can make you throw up. Anyway he went to a hospital he had been to before, knew his insurance would cover it, but for some reason the ER doctor who treated him was like "on loan" or something from another hospital. Instead of his insurance taking care of it, they refused to pay for this one doctor and sent him a bill for a few grand. It took like 8 months to get resolved. Hearing him rant about it while he was trying to get it taken care of just made me shake my head about how stupid some of these things can be.

Im a doctor and I cant even understand medical bills, we have such a jacked up system. Get like 4 different pieces of mail from various entities for any visit each saying I owe different amounts.

there's gotta be some sort of misunderstanding that happened here. they'd have to be charging a ridiculous amount and not participate with your insurance.

Omg insurance. We have to do stupid things like have patient get their own infusion prescription filled at an outside pharmacy which then ships us the drug. We store the drug separately (we have our own supply of the drug) under the patient's name in a special area and then use their special dose to make their infusion when they show up. Overall, like 2 hours of some pharmacist's day is spent trying to contact prescribers and pharmacies to coordinate ordering/delivering these "patient's own meds" that we already have plenty of stock of.

Stepped on glass and went to the clinic to see if I needed stitches. Waited forever. Finally doc takes a look and says nope, don't need stitches. Nurse cleans it up, wraps it, and I'm on my way. Bill: $200. FU.

Received bill from a hospital for thousands that I had not incurred. Had not been to that hospital in years. Never heard of the doctor they were billing me for (also billing for lab work, etc). Called and explained that it was not me, I had not been there in years. They stated it "wasn't that easy" to get out of paying the bill.

At the time I had excellent insurance and a huge portion of it would have been covered. They asked me if I had insurance information I wanted to submit so they could bill them directly. Explained I did have insurance but did not want to give them the info since I didn't have the treatment. They said they would continue to bill me then.

I asked if they could give me the times of the appointments (the dates were on the bill) which they researched and provided. I sent in my time card from work showing I was working when the appointments happened. They stated it was not sufficient proof.

Eventually, a friend of a friend who worked in billing looked further into it for me, and said since I had been to that hospital previously I had some kind of number assigned to me (patient, bill number, not even sure if SS#) and it looks like it was miskeyed one digit off. She fixed it for me. If I didn't know someone who knew someone, pretty sure I would still be getting the bill.

You should be able to charge companies like this for wasting your ****ing time with their incompetence.

I would have let them know that you were going to report them to your state's attorney general for medical billing fraud (and if that didn't help I would send a letter to the AG about being billed for services you didn't incur and cc: them, as well as possibly the BBB). That will generally get them to take your complaint seriously and have them look into whether they actually provided the service, rather than forcing you to prove you didn't get it.

My girlfriend had a major stroke a year ago. She's young, relatively healthy, not overweight, doesn't smoke or do drugs. It was apparently a complete freak thing that they think was caused by her birth control. She almost died.

She is on my insurance that I get through work, and it's good insurance. We have paid a bunch already and certainly met our out of pocket maximum, but now we are getting a bill for $7000 that insurance is trying not to pay. The bill is for the thrombectomy, which is literally the removal of the massive clot in a major brain artery that caused the stroke. Truly a life saving procedure.

The insurance company is saying it was an "investigational" procedure and therefore is not covered. I don't know if it got coded incorrectly, or the doctor didn't write a good enough report, or what. All I know is they're trying to get this money from us that they will surely never get, and it's a giant hassle that is still ongoing.

So that sucks.

my wife had something similar happen, she was out of the country when the procedures happened. Someone had fat fingered her ssn/id/whatever. Took about 10 phone calls to get it cleared up.

I found persistence pays off, if you keep calling people will help you so they don't have to deal with you anymore

I don't get it. I thought the US medical system was a flawless example of the invisible hand working its magic but in danger of being crushed by the wicked scepter of socialism. Why is everyone complaining?

You were mistaken.

Without trying to politard this thread: is the general consensus in the US in favor of medical insurance vs public health care? I'm not saying full-blown cover-all health care, but a certain level of free services. If everyone paid, for example, 1-2% extra taxes to get a certain level of free health care (free emergency operations, pay X% less when bills over 200$ per year, etc.), does that sound like a horrible idea to most people? From reading here and other places it seems that the insurance in many cases are more expensive, and certainly more complicated and time consuming, than having a state funded minimum health care through taxes.

That sounds like a super sweet deal but i think it'd cost more than 1-2% more in taxes.

Generally I think it'd be cool if the government paid for our health care.

It is pretty cool and quite a sweet deal. Thanks Canada.

You can, in a way. I am not a credit repair lawyer, but you can keep a paper trail of this thing and then if/when it goes on your credit report you can sue all three reporting agencies, the medical provider, and the collection agency and they'll likely settle with you for a standard amount rather than going to court and risking a much bigger loss once they realize that you were right.

There are reputable attorneys who will take this kind of work for a contingency fee.

I never realized we were light years ahead until I had opened this thread tbh, we have it pretty good.

Americans hate being associated or called socialists for some reason...

Honestly, as poor as the Health Care system is there is one worse system in the US and that's the government. Private Health insurance and I believe what you are proposing public Health Insurance are both going to have their drawbacks and inefficiencies.

My issue with the US system is we pay the highest rates in the world I believe for Health Care and the Health Care results are some of the worst in the first world. If what we are paying resulted in great care, I would understand paying a premium. Since what we are paying for is substandard, that's the huge disconnect I don't get.

The US HC system wastes a ton of money on patients that have little life expectancy and a ton of money on paperwork.

Admitted to a hospital after breaking my back in 3 places due to a fall from my horse. Brought in via car driven by a friend since I was in the middle of ****ing nowhere and it would have taken an ambulance a long time to get to me and a friend was close by and available. Was triaged quickly because I couldn't stand up but then was parked in subwaiting for 3 hours with no care and no painkillers (bear in mind, spine shattered in 3 places here). Finally get seen, tell the docs I absolutely cannot have narcotics for any reason due to a history of addiction, they give me Demerol anyway without my permission. After all the relevant procedures have been done, they inform me that my insurance is no good (I had BCBS at the time) and I will be sent a bill. I get a bill from the hospital and the radiology department even though my insurance was current. It took about 4 years to get them to **** off.

Brought in by ambulance after being attacked by a dog with major facial injuries requiring stitches and a bit of nasal reconstruction. I was in my pajamas and had no identification or payment information. They refused to let me leave until I could either pay or prove who I was so they could bill me. Obviously I was in no position to do either. I was then informed that I would not be permitted to call a friend or family member so that they could bring my wallet with ID, credit cards, and insurance information. I had to speak to a patient advocate to get them to **** off.

Brought into the ER for vomiting blood. Was told they would accept my insurance and that I would be billed for the visit after the fact. They sent the bill to the wrong person and I had no idea what had happened until I started receiving collection calls.

Went to an IOP clinic after setting up a consultation and confirming that they would accept my insurance. I gave them my insurance card at the front desk when I checked in and completed the relevant paperwork. They thanked me, performed the evaluation, and recommended that I enroll in the program before informing me that they would not, in fact, accept my insurance. Not only would I be billed $1300 PER DAY OF TREATMENT, but I would be billed the full cost of the evaluation they'd already performed whether I chose to enter treatment or not ($700 instead of the $100 they told me when I set the appointment). This is still ongoing.

I'm not sure how you can write this and then continue on. Anything you type would be by definition politarding.

I remember my cousin had an incident when she was holidaying in the states a few years ago. Her 6 year old son got a fever so my cousin and her husband went to the nearest hospital to have him checked. Waited a few hours before the kid was examined by a nurse, an intern, a pediatrician, and an infectologist, in that order. My cousin told me they maybe used 5 minutes combined. The kid was fine and they left the hospital with some antipyrogens and a recommendation to come again if the kid did not respond to the drugs.

A few weeks later back home they got a bill of around $2.5K. Thankfully the travel insurance company has an armada of lawyers and are used to these kind of cases, so my cousin didn't have to pay a thing.

I was more interested if people in the US prefer medical insurance to tax-financed health care, than to spark any political debate. If you think the post is too off-topic or political, I'll ask a mod to delete it.