Mom should inventory her assets.
Retirement accounts are generally exempt from creditors. In many states, the home that you live in is exempt as well. Many older people have only these assets and can therefore take a very strong position when negotiating these bills down.
Mom should definitely think twice before withdrawing from retirement accounts to pay bills such as this. Once you take the money out, it is no longer exempt.
^this.
In the case of bills for a deceased spouse, they aren't the responsiblity of the surviving spouse anyway, they pass to the estate. This may seem like semantics but for many seniors who have no assets other than a house and perhaps retirement accounts, there's no probated estate, the house and retirement accounts are protected, and there's nothing for creditors to take.
My step father passed away about 4 years ago after a fall and a protracted hospital stay, a hip replacement, and then a final stay in a nursing/rehab facility. He had only Medicare A. Their only asset is the house they live in; my mother now receives the Social Security spousal benefit roughly equal to my step-father's benefit.
Bills were over $500k. As you can imagine, my mother could not realistically pay any of it. I feel for the medical providers; this sort of expensive end of life care is *THE* reason the US medical system is so expensive. Having said that, we needed to keep my mother from trying to pay bills she couldn't pay, getting constantly harassed by bill collectors, etc.
I took all of the bills and for about a year just sent medical creditors a copy of the death certificate and a letter stating that there was no estate, sorry. Some of the creditors will call and try to get the surviving spouse to sign a payment agreement (which can then be collected upon); I stopped all of those. Eventually the letters quit.