Did I get your attention? Ok, well I do need some negotiating advice....
My wife had an emergency room visit the other week. We were there from 12 to about 3am. Although she was in enough pain to warrant the visit, it subsided quickly with heavy pain medication and turned out to be a non-serious issue. No further treatment will be needed.
I havent received the hospital bill yet, but I did receive an insurance statement. What was the cost of our 3 hour visit? Over 5k out of our pocket. More than $4,000 is for a ct scan.
I found ynab last year and mmm about 6 months ago. Since then we've accomplished a lot. Cut off all credit card debt, increased savings, etc. The emergency fund is not built up enough to cover this yet. We have money in the bank, but its set aside for other things. I was going to have everything covered one month in advance by next week!
Any tips on negotiating a lower amount with the hospital?
Every hospital is a bit different. Also ACA has had many hospitals revisit their policies, unfortunately.
That said, ask for a paid in full discount. Typically by me this would result in an immediate reduction of 15-20% Which I then put on a credit card for the miles
Alternatively depending on your income you may qualify for part or full charity. I know at my most frequent hospital the charity income for a family of 2 is under $75,000 to be considered. We now have another person and a significantly higher income so we never did get charity, but the hospital people were very nice about the situation.
Finally, they will almost always offer an interest free payment plan. I just started one last month. Not because I didn't have the money, but because my daugther's most recent ER visit (febrile seizure) had us in a new hospital on New Years Day without a pediatrician. Let's just say the ER doc was very nice, but not very knowledgeable and ended up doing lots of crazy stuff. Our pediatrician visit the next day was hilarious as I brought in the test results. At one point I even paged our pediatrician from the ER to talk to the ER doc; yes it was that bad. Once I got the bill, I asked for a discount. They said no. I said fine set up a payment plan. At $10 a month that $1400 bill is going to take a long time. I loaded them in bill pay. Eventually I'll get sick of the $10 debits and send them payment in full. I just know how much checks cost to process and they angered me. The care my daughter received was subpar and the customer service from the financial accounts department was too. Apologies are worthless, so hurting them financially is my only option.
As long as you speak nicely to them the financial accounts people are happy to talk and give you all your options. If you are a screamer, don't bother to call.
