Yeah. There is no early way I'm paying $27k.
The hospital said it is 120 days until it goes to collections. So I'll pay it in 119 if they haven't worked it out.
Clearing up a trashed credit score would be harder than a refund...
Okay, so this was 11 years ago, but I got a $3000 bill for my first birth (vaginal with epidural, 2 nights in hospital), on a total bill of about $5000? (I feel like hospital was $5k, and doctor was $4k, or thereabouts).
I got the EOB from my insurance company. I called the hospital to get an itemized bill. Then in my sleep-deprived state, I attempted to make sense of it.
But literally NONE of the lines matched. Not the title. Not the code. Not the $ amounts. I could not even combine several lines together to get any $ amount to match.
So I called the hospital and started in on my talk "well, I have your bill, and the EOB, and nothing lines up at all".
Hospital: "Wait, let us handle that. It can be confusing. We will call the insurance company."
A bit later (a week? 2 weeks?) magically my new bill was $700. ($350 deductible x 2) It made me wonder:
#1: how many people "just pay it" to avoid dealing with the hospital and insurance. It saves them both money.
#2: how many times insurance denies payment "just because"
I say this because years later, my kid #2 had surgery at 9 months. It was necessary, and pre-qualified / approved.
First EOB from the insurance company said "we are denying payment for this surgery because it was not emergency surgery". No shit dipwads, that's why we got the PRE-APPROVAL.
In the end, they paid it, but it took 1.5 YEARS. Between the insurance company denials, the poor billing practices of the hospital, the fact that the hospital and doctors bill separately, the different insurance companies (kiddo double covered), change in insurance at the end of the year...what a mess.
And I'm pretty sure all along, hospital and insurance were hoping that we'd "just pay the bill". The cost was approximately $25,000 (outpatient). Our cost: $125 (the outpatient cost), which we paid for out of the HSA.
But many many hours on the phone, my husband was the one who did it. I'd recommend using someone who is both stubborn and not sleep deprived.