Negotiating Your Hospital Bills. Don't Panic!
Medical debt is a crisis in the United States. One recent study suggests that 100 million people in the United States are facing some kind of financial hardship linked to medical debt. (More on this study later this month.)
An unexpected hospitalization is a drain to your energy, your peace of mind, and your finances. Don’t panic! There are definitely some steps you can take to limit the damage, however. Negotiating hospital bills isn’t just for big insurance companies and government programs like Medicare—you, the patient, can do it too.
There are a number of organizations out there offering sound advice on negotiating hospital bills. The good people at the National Consumer Law Center have perhaps the most in-depth guides to all aspects of medical debt; for the uninsured or underinsured, their Guide to Reducing Hospital Bills for Lower-Income Patients is a detailed, step-by-step map to a pretty scary territory. If you’re just looking for a general overview of the hospital bill negotiation process, investigative reporter Deb Hipp has a good one on Debt.com.
One overall principle it might help to keep in mind is that hospitals would prefer some money to no money. No money is what they would get if you were forced to declare bankruptcy. So you have more leverage than you might expect in negotiating your bills.
