I need some help from experienced people or hospital billing people willing to give advice to a broke family dealing with a large medical expense.
We had to take our 1 year old to radys children’s hospital. It is an in network hospital. Got my EOB and they charged us $3500 for a CT scan, $145 for 1 2mg zofran pill, and $3400 for the ER visit fees. It was about $7100 total. My insurance payed $2300. We are left with a $5000 bill that we cannot afford.
We applied for financial assistance but got denied bc we didn’t meet both of their financial assistance policy needs:
We don’t qualify for medi-cal
I feel the services were highly inflated.
What can I do? We cannot afford this bill.
Can I ask about cash pay even after insurance payed out their portion? If so, how much does it typically go down?
Can I bring up the inflated cost of services? A CT scan is about $800-1000, a single zofran pill is $1, and the ER visit should have been about $1000-1500
Should I tell the hospital that I can only afford $500 to settle this? They already got $2500 from insurance.
Should I just say I can pay $5/month on a payment plan?l
Should I just let it go to collections and offer them a low price since they pay pennys on the dollar?
I would really appreciate any help!