How to Pay Hospital Bills

Are you buried in medical debt?  Did you know that’s the number one reason Americans declare bankruptcy?  That’s a sad statement of our nation.  When somebody has an emergency they don’t want to go in an ambulance as that will potentially cost them thousands.  Instead, they call a cab, Lyft driver, or Uber driver.  Yup.  Ridesharing has now become your low-cost ambulance service.

I’m getting a little off track, so I’m getting back to paying the hospital bills.  I got stuck on going broke before you even get to the hospital with the whole ambulance thing.  Sorry about that.  There are plenty of ways to go broke in the hospital in less than 24 hours.  Trust me.

Now that your heart attack has been treated and you’re feeling back to normal, you go out to your mailbox one day and there’s a hospital bill for $160,000.

You have Another heart attack.

Here’s where I can recussitate you.  Don’t pay it.  The hospital will threaten to take you to collections but then settle at a fraction of the cost.

The upside is that you get a huge break.  The down side is that people like me pay higher health insurance premiums because you’re a deadbeat.

The bigger problem is the way our medical system is set up.  I could go on and on on why our drug prices are out of control (here’s a hint:  research and development) and why doctors feel justified in ripping us all off (another hint:  to pay off medical school loan debt and malpractice insurance).

Money and medicine do not play well together.