Pay medical bill $10 a month?

[atisikitabasket]

I would call and ask if you can apply for financial assitance. Most Hospitals have this but do not advertise and you do have to meet certain requirements such as max income and such but you might qualify it is worth a chance.

Also one hospital I worked with started a new policy with a local bank since they were losing so much money. The bank automaticaly qualified every patient at a low % interest and if they didn't pay the hospital within 90 it would roll to the bank. They had forms signed when people came in.

I didn't think that was a good thing at all!

 

[me again]

Thanks for all the advice, but like I said before I'm not dealing with a hospital. Its a free-standing imaging clinic.

Our finances are quite strained right now, $10 is all I can afford for the present. I hope to be able to pay off the bill at a later date, right now our priority is our house payment, utilities, etc. My main intent is to keep the account active, I've found despite what they say as long as there's account activity they usually don't do anything. If it goes beyond 120 days past due they get nasty. Hopefully we can come up with something within that time frame. BTW, they did get paid quite a bit from the insurance, $1300, so its not like they didn't get anything. I can't put my family on the streets to pay a medical bill.

 

[EthansMom]

First, did you check with your insurance to make sure that you actually owe $500? I've had a few times where different medical providers said I owed them more than the insurance said I owed (in a couple instances, the billing dept. for the provider said I owed the "write-off" amount). That would be my first call.

Secondly, if you do owe the $500, then your sending in a letter saying how much you will pay and when doesn't constitute an agreement on their part to accept those payment terms. You could either (1) call the billing dept. of the provider's office and speak to someone about a payment plan and/or (2) use debt to pay off the amount (either a personal loan from a bank or credit union or credit cards).

You would be best to do anything you could to keep the debt from going to collections.