Medical Bills...Dealing with original creditor

I work for a hospital, and usually the anesthesia billing is a seperate entity. They are only contracted by the hospital, but may reside in the same building.
What does your attorney say?
I had some experience with medical bills, and I dealt directly with the collection agency and told them to find out how much it would cost to pay off everything. They dealt directly with the creditors, the hospital, and I ended up paying it all off at 50% of the original bills.

Well this will all be covered by the insurance company of the guy that hit me, so I'm not worried about paying less...Plus settlement can be just as bad as not paying it at all sometimes.

But if I deal with the original creditor, the collection agencies will have remove their entries from my credit report.

Make sure you receive everything in writing once you pay it to your creditor. It won't be a big deal then to get the collection account removed from your report.

Yes, I will, definately! :)

I feel kinda bad for Marina, my Collection lady at one of them...lol She'll miss out on the commission. I kinda like her, she's nice. Maybe I'll send her a gift card or something. :)

That's pretty muc how it works with medical collections. If you pay the original creditor, it has to be removed from your credit report. (If they don't, I have a letter you can send)

~Mary

I have a few other medical bills as well...When I get the money I think I'll send them to the original creditors as well....

Worse that can happen is they send the money back, right?

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But since it was paid to the hospital/dr/office the collector has to remove it from my CR, right?

from an anesthesiologist from having my baby 7 months ago and my insurance didnt cover the bill(1800.00))

Have you asked your insurace why they didn't cover any of it?

I also work at a very large hospital(Health Information as a medical coder so I know some of the financial side also) and here is thought for possible future need.

If you do have legitimate hospital bills and you really do not have the resources to pay the totals you may be able to use this information to help reduce or eliminate them.

This is at the time it happens. It would be to late if they went unpaid.

Most hospitals public and private get so much Federal money that has to have a certain percentage be put towards "hardship cases" and I use that term in a general sense. If they do not apply this percentage each year then they will lose or have to reimburse it back to the Federal government.

So if you can prove at the time that you do not have the funds and the medical bills would be an actual hardship sometimes you can have them reduced or written off.

It is worth inquiring about if you fall within the hospitals guidelines. Of course this is something that they are not going to tell you up front.

Just a little info that may help you out at some point if you get hit with some big hospital bill.

Tim

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That's great info, Tim! :)

Mary--I'll PM you with my home # later.

Sounds good. I'll definitely send you an e-mail tomorrow when I can sit down and think straight....LOL

~Mary