https://www.wsj.com/personal-finance/how-to-not-pay-your-medical-bills-e9d195e6?st=Smcycm
How to Not Pay Your Medical Bills
- Actually, that’s easy. This is how I paid a lot less.
By Joel Stein
Feb. 20, 2025 10:25 am ET
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As you probably recall, I had a mole removed about a year ago. As fresh as this is in all of our memories, a year is a fair bit of time, so I was surprised to get a bill in the mail for $604.80 from a company called DermTech. Apparently, much like wedding gifts, you have a year to send someone a medical bill.
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A friend of mine, who is retired and better off than me, has a different strategy. He calls and asks for a payment plan. He offers 5$/month since that’s “all his budget allows”. Each month he mails 5$ paper checks by US mail. Sometimes people call and say don’t bother since processing the checks costs them more than 5$. I don’t understand that but it seems to work for him.
My only experience with “delayed billing” was with a hospital bill for my sainted wife’s last hospital stay that was about TWO YEARS prior. It was bill for about 1½ M dollars. That certainly made my eyes water. Talking to them yielded that someone forgot to send it to the insurance company and I should submit it to my insurance company.
Instead, I called my lawyer. His firm was conflicted out because they represent the hospital. He recommended any local lawyer could take care of this with one letter. Found one with an office near my home. One visit. TWO LETTERS required.
First one to the hospital asking for their agreement with the insurance company. After a two week delay, he sent a SECOND LETTER to the hospital that their agreement with the insurance company required all bills to be submitted within 180 days and, if not, were deemed “closed”. A month later he got a letter saying basically “You’re right. Have a nice day”. Cost me about $400. Slightly better than 1½ M$!
At no extra charge, the local lawyer pointed out that the hospital wouldn’t want to make an issue out of it since the contract with the hospital applied to all hospital bills even if the patient was not insured or insured with some other insurance company. I can understand why they don’t want that to become common knowledge. Wonder if the hospital’s lawyers cleaned up their contracts?
Of course, YMMV.
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Reinke Faces Life 