ARGH. More medical bills

[Wailer]

GGD wrote:
[quote=C(-)ris]
Yea, I haven't quite figured that out. It takes MONTHS for me to get bills from my Doctor's office. I don't understand how they let their A/R sit for so long before even trying to collect.

I think it's generally because the patient is the last one they collect from. First they bill the insurance company, wait for that to get billed/disputed/refiled/paid/etc, and then when that's complete they bill you for the rest.

I recently got a bill for $13 from an office visit back in January, that was the amount that the insurance didn't cover, I think they must have resubmitted it a few times, possibly thought it wasn't worth billing me for, and then finally it seemed to get shipped to some other collections division that just sent me a bill.
They really have to markup the costs because of non-collection factors. I'd guess that close to 1% of geriatric patients die before their bills are even received.

The doctors I know aren't great businessmen and don't understand time-value of money or net present value. I'm sure their thinking is something like "I'm making so much money, who cares if I don't get paid until next year" and they don't realize the longer they wait to get paid the more likely it is that they won't. The ones that do understand will usually gladly give a 20% discount for payment at the time of services and a 25% discount for check and 30% for cash. At least this is what I shoot for when I'm negotiating ahead of time. Of course, I have an HSA so I pay the first $3500/yr out-of-pocket (reimbursed by my tax deductible HSA contributions, of course).

[Wailer]

ztirffritz wrote:
I think that all told so far, my son has cost me just about $400. That includes, the birth, clothes, food, and diapers...oh, and $15,000 for his college fund.

Don't forget all the missed wages and lack of sleep! And just wait until they start preschool and activities. I was very frugal with my kids (generic diapers, few new toys, hand-me-downs, few vacations, 1 stroller over the last 5 years), but preschool here in LA is expensive. Also, we spent a lot more on a bigger home in a good public school district and a bigger car. By far the biggest "expense" is the lack of time to do other things. If you want to be wealthy, don't have kids! Just kidding, of course.

On the plus side, you get $1k tax credit per year per kid (if your combined AGI is under ~ $110k) and you get to deduct $3500 or so per dependent. Lastly, the first $800/yr in investment or interest income that your kids make is tax free!

[M A V I C]

mrbigstuff wrote:
Our insurance would have covered just about everything if it wasn't for a complicated birth with a hospital transfer.

That sounds very strange. I will assume that you have checked out all of your options in this regard, but do you have a medical professional (physician, administrator) with you to argue your side? This can be very helpful, although it requires that you have a good relationship with the person or for them to be altruistic enough to fight on your behalf with the ins. co.

My wife handled medical billing for a while, so she knows it fairly well. Had it been a typical birth, we knew how much we were in for. But for all the extra services, those are covered but not as much. Plus the day after she was released she was readmitted via the ER for a CT scan of a possible blood clot in her lung.

bazookaman wrote:
Just tell them it will be a year before they get paid.

With every bill we get, we call up and setup a payment plan. Whatever the longest one they'll give us is... never more than a year.

ztirffritz wrote:
I think that all told so far, my son has cost me just about $400. That includes, the birth, clothes, food, and diapers...oh, and $15,000 for his college fund.

How so? The only thing I can think of is you're counting tax deductions... I don't need any more of those.

[AAA]

I have had three or four years of maximum out of pocket medical expenses.
Not sure of what the overall total is or would be. I probably had a couple hundred thousand in bills last year and this year. My out of pocket is not that of course.

Medical bills have always, every single year, been more than vacation expenditure, etc. My last time off work was again at a hospital.

Everyone should get all their work pay, and have to write a check to our government every pay day to see how much THAT costs all of us.

[Speedy]

Our daughter is 19. In her first 6 months her medical bills totaled a bit over $500K which is when our insurance dumped her. She went over $2M a decade ago. Fortunately for us we were able to get regular fee for service insurance through a great state program. And she could get medical assistance based on her income (and medical needs), not ours, also thanks to the state where we live (a blue state, of course.) We pay a parental fee based on our income. So far our pay out has only been about $100K spread over 19 years.

Renal failure, kidney transplants, congestive heart failure, developmental delays and short stature each qualified her for medical assistance determined using the social security disability bluebook.

Naturally we are strong proponents of single payer like Medicare (which she also had but which we dropped because of the doughnut (or toilet) hole for prescriptions.)

[M A V I C]

AAA & Speedy, you guys are allowed to tell me "it could be worse"

[jdc]

mrbigstuff wrote:
the reason most freelancers or self-employed are either: (a) screwed; or (b) married with a working, benefitted (sic) spouse.

Thats how we are. baby #2 was an emergency c-section and then 5 days in the hospital -- 3 years ago, close to $100,000.

Happily, wifes insurance paid 100%, we didnt pay a penny.

Well, they get $500 a month from her check...

[Black]

When I had my neck injury in 2001 it took a little over a year to finally get the last bills settled.

[Mike Sellers]

M A V I C wrote: With every bill we get, we call up and setup a payment plan. Whatever the longest one they'll give us is... never more than a year.

We had a $6,000 bill for surgery on one of my kids from last year. We arranged to pay it over 18 months. A few months ago, they called and gave us a pretty decent discount to pay the remainder off. Now I wish we had paid even less over the last year.

Stretch it out as long as you can. As long as you're sending something each month, I can't imagine them going after you if you exceed the 12 month timetable, especially considering how many people totally stiff them.

[M A V I C]

Mike Sellers wrote:
[quote=M A V I C]With every bill we get, we call up and setup a payment plan. Whatever the longest one they'll give us is... never more than a year.

We had a $6,000 bill for surgery on one of my kids from last year. We arranged to pay it over 18 months. A few months ago, they called and gave us a pretty decent discount to pay the remainder off. Now I wish we had paid even less over the last year.

Stretch it out as long as you can. As long as you're sending something each month, I can't imagine them going after you if you exceed the 12 month timetable, especially considering how many people totally stiff them.
Yeah, we basically heard that if you keep in contact and don't just ignore them, they'll work with you. We did have one issue where we had a payoff plan and before the end of it we got a letter saying if we didn't pay off the remainder within 7 days we were going to collections. We even had an invoice from them that gave the date the next payment was due (weeks off) and showed we weren't behind. That would have been the final payment... $30 or something like that. So we just went ahead and paid it, but we also sent a copy of the invoice along with a note pointing out their collection warning was contrary to the previous agreement.