r/HospitalBills

Hi, I am looking for advice on how to handle this, I got caught in a messed up situation when i was 19 I had a three day day stay and ambulance ride that was considered out of network and now i’m on the hook for 42,000 that’s in collections. I’ve payed on it off and on since i got it and i’m sure they could sue for that much. Is there anything I can do?

hello, would really appreciate any advice for my current situation

for context:
broke my ankle in 2 places a month ago and needed to call 911 (was in the mountains) and was rushed to hospital in which they performed surgery the day after, i ended up staying for abt 4 days total.

now:
i was billed $300,000 for the whole hospital visit and an extra $3000 for third party anesthesia services (although i was still charged for it in the initial hospital charges). I was getting help while at the hospital in applying for emergency insurance coverage but was denied as i “made too much” (i make abt $3500/mo). now i am still trying to work with the hospital for financial assistance and they said they can drop it to $32000 if i pay within 30 days, which i can not do. I haven’t paid anything yet, it’s been abt a month since the initial billing and unsure about my next steps. would seriously appreciate any advice. 🙏

Hi my boyfriend went to the er within his network was quoted 350 for foreign object removal from his ear he did not pay there and now is being quoted almost 2,000 from his insurance. Hospital says there's no bill when he called. How is there no bill from the hospital yet insurance is telling him to pay almost 2,000?

Hey! Im really hoping to get some guidance.

About 4 months ago I went to a doctor's appointment, lomg sorry short I discovered the hospital was not in network and I owed them money.

I was prompted to set up a payment plan for 1200 dollars and I did, I had paid about 700 dollars of it when it suddenly went up by 1000 dollars. I did not receive any email or physical mail to explain why. So I called the billing department several times and went to voice mail and never received a call back.

Yesterday I received a check in the mail from the hospital for 929 dollars with no letter or explanation. Then I finally went to the hospital and asked about my bill, they were not helpful in the slightest. They said that apparently me agreeing to a payment plan meant that I was agreeing to a third party buying my debt so now the hospital cant really see anything about it and hand to submit somthing. So now I'm waiting for a response next week. Any ideas? TYIA!

I have gout since 2014 and take medication. Got a new PCP since switching jobs in 2020, and when I got rashes, he changed me from allopurinol to febuxostat. Later we found out the rashes were due to unrelated reasons, and he didn't want me to switch medications frequently so I stayed on it. When my refills ran out, CVS usually requests to renew it and I have no issues.

I got laid off in May 2025 and went to see if I could get my usual prescription before my insurance expired since febuxostat is $300+. CVS told me to go contact my PCP. I contact my PCP and the receptionist said I need to speak directly to the doctor about my medication and there would be no charge. He called me back a couple days later, refilled my prescription, and I thought I was good to go.

A couple months later I get a bill for $79.60 for a doctor visit. I called Optum talk to them and then opened an appeal. They changed my in-office visit, to a telecommunication visit. Appeal got denied so I opened an appeal with UnitedHealthcare. While that appeal was going on they kept sending me bills and I called Optum. They told me they'll note it in my profile and to ignore it. Optum sent me to collections while I was appealing with UnitedHealthcare. UnitedHealthcare appeal got denied. I then appealed with DHMC and that got denied too.

Optum said any medication needs/discussions is billed as a doctors visit and it was considered an "office visit". UnitedHealthcare pretty much said they only handle billing so take it up with Optum. DHMC said due to their terms and conditions I am liable for any services I receive. They told me "my issue is with the quality of service" from Optum which they have forwarded to them and it will be investigated.

I got a collection notice from Professional Credit Service to pay the bill again. Is there anything I can do? To me $79.60 is not a lot, but I feel like I got scammed. It was the entire reason I went through the long arduous path of appeals. I feel like I should just take the L and just pay it. My friends were telling me to not pay the scammers and since it is below the $500 limit it won't effect me.

I have since changed pharmacy from CVS to Costco and through this experience. Costco dude told me the reason is febuxostat requires a doctors visit for the prescription and allopurinol does not. I had to my prescription changed back to allopurinol through Costco, they renewed my refills, and they've handled everything so well for me since. I am gonna stick with Costco. I am just going to have my pharmacist handle everything from now on.

This ended up being a rant. Thank you for reading this far and any advice is appreciated.

tl;dr CVS told me to contact my PCP to renew refill. Optum charged me for a doctor's visit when I did not visit the doctor's office. Appealed with Optum, changed in office visit to telecommunication visit. Appeal failed. Appealed UnitedHealthcare and DHMC and both failed. I feel like I got scammed. Should I just pay it?

I’m dealing with a frustrating situation and wondering if this has happened to anyone else.

After I gave birth, the hospital sent me a bill, but I requested an itemized bill to actually understand the charges before paying anything. I confirmed my address with their billing department multiple times and followed up on several occasions, but they never sent it.

Fast forward about 5 months later, I suddenly get a notice from collections. What’s confusing is that collections clearly had my correct address (since I received their letter), but the hospital somehow “couldn’t” send me the itemized bill all that time.

I reached out to collections asking for a detailed bill, but they only provided a very basic summary—not a true itemized breakdown.

Has this happened to anyone else? What’s the best way to handle this? Should I dispute it, go back to the hospital directly, or request something specific?

Any advice would be really appreciated.

My wife had a medical condition at the beginning of April and I took her to the nearest ER, which is out-of-network because at that point I just needed someone to examine her. There, she was diagnosed with a hemorrhagic stroke. The neurosurgeon present said it was a lot of bleeding in the brain and he heavily recommended us to get a surgery to removed as much blood from the brain as possible so we opted to do that. The surgery happened the same night as the ER visit and then she was admitted to the ICU afterwards. We recently got our Explanation of Benefits from our provider and while the ER visit was counted as in-network, the surgery itself was billed as surgery and not as ER. As a result, the patient responsibility of anesthesia and surgery totaled to about $23,000. By my understanding, No Surprises Act should cover surgeries performed during the ER visit. I have just filed a dispute of these charges and contacted the social worker of the hospital which the ER visit was done at to try to get additional documents supporting my case. In the meantime, if I can get more information on what I should be doing and looking out for, that will be extremely helpful. Thank you in advance.

Update: Her insurance is through her employer and is Blue Shield of California.

Hello!

I think insurance made some mistakes in my medical bill calculations, and I couldn't get them to change their mistakes. Anyhow, I ended up with my medical bill going to collections. I can pay off the collections but how to do it correctly, and what do I do so that it does not appear on my credit reports? The collection agency is Harris and Harris.

So my husband had to have hernia surgery. The total is over $22k ! He doesn’t have insurance. We can’t afford one more monthly bill. We’ve applied for financial assistance and they’ve received all of the documents you could imagine: entire 1040 tax return, bank statements, 401k amounts, monthly expenses, W2. They’re also asking for a letter of hardship. We’re a family of four (two little kids.)

Is it crazy to ask for the bill to be completely waived? We’re not as bad off as some. But we’re a one income family and the bills is half of what my husband makes in a year.

Thank you in advance!

I have a $1700 hospital bill for myself. We have 3 children. Our annual income is about 150k which may sound like a lot BUT we pay a ton for medical every year between premiums and out of pockets. My kids have medical conditions. My one child treats with a doctor who doesn't take insurance and is $780 a visit. We live frugally (live in townhouse that we put 20% down on 8 years ago), don't take vacations, have paid off vehicles and buy lots from consignment. Unfortunately health reasons cost our family a lot with food, meds, treatment. So we really can not save.

I applied for financial assistance with the hospital and now they are asking for tax records. Is there a point to providing them? Has anyone had success getting a hospital bill reduced?

Hello age 25 here. I had some events evolving the ER quite a few times 3-5 years ago. Long story short I probably have around 3-5k worth of medical bills total? Mostly in the same hospital , some in a different. Nothing has happened so far i don’t even think my credit has been impacted.

Anyway. I would probably wanna try and clear this up and get this resolved. Some people have told me I can call the collection agency and offer to pay 20-30 % and call it as “full” and settled. What are the odds they would let this happened if I called?

So I went to the ER they had me wait on a stretcher in the hallway. When they got to me they did an x-ray in the hall. Total time with staff was less than 10min. I got a facility bill for 530 and a doctor's bill for 1280, is that normal

So my doctor left in November and I was assigned a new doctor. I was not aware at the time I would have to have a “meet” appointment with the doctor before I can have a physical or get any medical appointments. I didn’t find out until after my insurance was switched on Jan 1st to really bad policy that my work offers. It doesn’t not cover anything except one physical a year and the rest I have to pay for up to like $5,600 and then my insurance will cover half. I don’t make much money ($19 an hour) and so after being told I have to have the meeting appointment with my assigned doctor in order to get a physical I went and now being charged $260 dollars for it. The literal appointment was just the doctor spent 4mins reading my medical chart and confirming what was on there. The one thing I asked about the doctor never helped me with so the appointment was a waste of time and was for the doctor’s sake not mine. Should I call the billing office and demand they wave the bill since it’s their bullshit policy that forced me to go to said appointment because my doctor quit? Anyone else deal with this before?

My 6-month-old daughter had hernia repair surgery about four and a half months ago with an in-network provider at an in-network hospital. About a week before the surgery, the in-network provider obtained authorization from our insurance for the procedure as an outpatient surgery.

Before surgery, the provider noted in the medical record that my daughter “may stay overnight per anesthesia team.” However, we were told this was an outpatient surgery and were not told in advance that the hospital might bill the stay as inpatient.

The surgery went well. Afterward, she stayed overnight for observation because, due to her age, she was considered at higher risk for apnea after anesthesia. The team said we are going to keep her overnight due to apnea risk. One of the diagnoses in the medical record is “apnea after anesthesia,” although my understanding is that she did not actually have an apnea episode. She was discharged the next morning, about 24 hours after surgery.

Insurance paid several related claims, but denied the largest claim, about $40,000, as not medically necessary. The EOB lists the denied claim as a single item: “semi-private room.” However, the hospital’s itemized bill shows that the $40,000 includes operating room charges, anesthesia, pain medication, PACU monitoring, and about $10,000 for the semi-private room.

I later learned that the hospital billed the stay as inpatient and submitted an inpatient authorization request on the day of surgery, apparently after the surgery had already happened. That request was denied. We did not know about this at the time because we never received the denial letter from insurance.

We appealed multiple times and lost. I also asked insurance to reprocess the claim with patient responsibility as $0, but they refused. Insurance asked the hospital to resubmit under the outpatient auth, but hospital refused.

Insurance says we are responsible because my husband signed a financial waiver form. However, it was a standard financial responsibility form, not a waiver specific to this inpatient stay, the denied authorization, or this particular charge.

Since both the provider and hospital were in-network, we argued that the hospital was responsible for obtaining any required authorization, and that we should not be responsible if the hospital submitted it late or failed to obtain approval. Insurance says the hospital did submit for authorization, but they have not addressed that it was denied or that it appears to have been submitted after the surgery.

At this point, I’m not sure what to do next and the hospital will not "appeal", as they are done with that.

Dude. I’m 7k in medical debt due to passing out and cutting my head open. All they did was give me staples and see if I was concussed, i wasn’t. Now I owe 7k. My insurance wants me to send in a paper saying who’s to blame when it was just me passing out lol. So I’m hoping when they review it maybe they will knock some off, because I mean isn’t that why I pay health insurance? Even so I’m not paying 7000 for staples especially when I was sitting for two hours in the bath head still bleeding praying that it would stop so I wouldn’t have to go in. And I was right, I shouldn’t have went in. Now I owe 7000 when I could have had my mom sew the crack or something. My question is, why does it have to be this way. To the point where I’m in pain and something is wrong and I dont go to the doctor out of fear of paying a crazy amount. Even my coworkers tell me the same thing. Have a problem? Just keep letting it bother you till you physically can’t anymore 😭.

Hypothetically speaking, if there were a tool that allowed you to upload your medical bills that cross checked them against Medicare, the physician fee schedule & hospital rate databases, No Surprises Act, CPT code definitions, Hospital Price Transparency rules, state balance billing laws, and your insurer's own stated policy terms to have them checked for errors - Would you use it? Why or why not?

I'm looking for some honest feedback, as I feel like something like this could really help a lot of people out. But I also feel like with medical info being personal, there may be a lot of hesitancy with it.