- Joined
- Jun 28, 2018
I agree with this post one hundred percent! I just want to add a few things at the end to help people understand. Just because it insinuates a "lawsuit" or a court case, it's not what you think. When you do medical billing, and the patient neglects their bill for 90-120 days (depending on the company+hospital agreement), the debt is considered as a nonpayment of a loan (I don't know how else to say that. Crucify me lol). Just like a loan nonpayment, the debt is sold to a debt collector. Before that is done, a defacto judgement is in place that helps place the amount in "default". Once your medical debt is sold to a medical billing collection agency, your original amount sky rockets, and, most importantly, it shows up EVERYWHERE! Your credit, your background checks, everywhere. They want their money. Also, it is said "medical bills don't effect your credit". That's right AND wrong. If your debt is still with the hospital, it will not show up, however, once the debt is sold, that's a different story. In essence, there is no "lawsuit". There is a "judgement". To think that hospitals would be taking people to court for unpaid bills is a thing that is not feasible. They would be in court CONSTANTLY. I hope this helped, and I mean no shade toward my fellow farmers. (This time)It doesn't happen often that people are sued for their own unpaid medical bills. Usually the provider sells your debt to a collection agency for whatever they can get.
e: to clarify, the reason it's uncommon is because most people who don't pay are failing to do so because they can't so there's no point in suing them. obviously when someone has a lot of money and isn't paying there's incentive to go after them, which may be what's happening here.
e2: to clarify further, in states with expanded Medicaid (like Kentucky) all the poor people have Medicaid, so most of their medical bills are paid, certainly their ER bills. So if you have unpaid ER bills to begin with in an expanded Medicaid state, it is assumed you make enough money that you don't qualify for Medicaid (read: you have considerable wages to garnish), so you're more likely to get sued. In states that don't have expanded Medicaid, poor people run up huge medical bills because they have no coverage and obviously no one bothers suing the destitute. Sorry if that was confusing.