What Happens If You Don’t Pay Medical Bills?
Medical bills happen, and depending on the severity of the situation or illness, or your insurance situation, the amount due can sometimes be pretty high. Because of this, repaying your portion of the costs can sometimes seem overwhelming or impossible; but, what happens if you don’t pay medical bills? Let’s take a look at some issues that you can incur and steps you can take to avoid those issues and amplifying those problems.
Pay Attention to Your Bills
The temptation to ignore a bill for your medical services can be pretty overwhelming, but it can be a big mistake. Don’t ever ignore a bill that you receive, no matter how unsightly. Not dealing with your medical bill can cause you to incur further issues, such as:
- Past due charges and penalties, thus increasing your bill
- Handing of your account over to collections
- Lowering of your credit score due to unpaid bill
- Potential cancellation of your insurance plan
- Non-service at a physician’s office the bill is from
Contact Your Medical Biller
When you receive a bill that is larger than you can afford, or otherwise unexpected, don’t delay in dealing with it and contact the billing party right away. Establishing contact with the party who supplied the medical services is a crucial first step and shows that you are willing to work with them to resolve the payment accordingly. When they don’t hear from you, you may be sent to collections, have services suspended, or be charged an abundance of late fees.
A step many people don’t realize they can do with their medical billers is negotiate their billed amounts. You can do this in several different ways:
- Ask into programs the hospital or doctor’s office may have to reduce bill amounts in accordance with income. Often, you can find low-income reductions available with insurances and medical offices.
- If you don’t have insurance, you can negotiate your bill directly with the hospital or doctors office just as an insurance company would. Your medical bills are typically going to be sent with essentially the MSRP rate (most suggested retail price), but if you speak with your biller you can generally get a reduced rate.
Read Your Bill Line by Line
If it’s a hospital bill or multiple services provided from one doctor’s office, be sure to look at each individual line of service being billed. If one of the lines of service doesn’t make sense, is duplicated, or seems exorbitant be sure to bring this up with your biller to see about getting it removed or the price reduced.
Check Into Medical Debt Forgiveness
There are certain state and Federal programs that you can potentially utilize to
Request a Payment Plan
Most medical creditors are willing to put payment plans in place so that you can satisfy your debt over time if you can’t afford to pay in full right away. You’ll have an easier chance if establishing a plan you can afford if you contact your medical biller as soon as you receive the bill instead of delaying dealing with it. Also, if the biller does not have any payment plan options through them, there are credit companies such as Care Credit that may be able to help. Care Credit works like a credit card, but can only be used to finance and pay for medical services.