If you’re injured in an accident or suffer an unexpected medical crisis, then you may be shocked by how expensive your medical bills are. With a hospital stay, one or more surgeries, several follow-up appointments, physical therapy and other treatments being required, it’s not unusual to see medical bills in the several thousands of dollars.
In a perfect world, your medical insurance would cover most of these costs. After all, isn’t that why you have insurance?
The disheartening reality is that health insurance typically covers only a fraction of the bills that you’ll receive in the aftermath of an accident or a serious illness. Your insurance company only makes the situation worse by seeming to look for ways to deny parts of your claim or underpay you.
The news from your health care provider is hardly more reassuring. Their astronomical bill is beyond what you’re able to pay. Soon, you find that you’re caught in a difficult situation to which you have to make hard decisions.
Your insurer is refusing to pay more on your claims, and the hospital and doctor are demanding that you pay their bills.
The situation is a prescription for lots of stress and plenty of sleepless nights. If you are facing bills that are forcing you into debt or perhaps considering bankruptcy, then it’s the right time to speak with a medical bills negotiation attorney.
Anyone who has battled an illness or been the victim of an accident knows how incredibly expensive medical care is in the U.S. A simple broken arm can easily cost $3,000 or more to treat. Staying in a hospital frequently costs $3,500 per day, and if you have a heart attack, the bill could easily run $20,000 or more.
Of course, health insurance does help to defray these costs, but it typically covers only a portion of the expenses.
Hospitals know this, so they inflate their bills. This means that they can not only get paid more by the insurance company, but also bill the patient for astronomical amounts. To cover their extra costs, the insurance company charges the patient higher premiums. It’s a never-ending cycle in which the average consumer always loses.
When you can’t afford to pay your hospital bill all at once, then you’ll get numerous nagging phone calls from their billing department. You can explain that you don’t have the money to pay it or tell them that you’re working with a personal injury attorney who is trying to recover compensation for you after an accident.
However, it’s possible that the hospital will file a lien against you. Potential creditors can see this lien on your credit report, which means that the rest of your financial well-being may suffer.
Your attorney will thoroughly review the care that you received and the resulting medical bills. Ultimately, he’s working to identify those portions of the bills that are the most grossly inflated. If the bills that you have do not provide enough detail, then he may request an itemized list of charges from the hospital or doctor.
From this list, it’s possible to see when you were charged $80 for a bottle of an over-the-counter pain reliever or an intravenous (IV) of saline solution that cost nearly $1,000. It is occasionally possible to have these charges reduced or even taken off of the bill. When this happens, the hospital is sometimes willing to settle for a small fraction of the principal amount.
The hospital or medical provider may try to dig in their heels with some of these outrageous charges, but the burden is typically on them to justify why they are charging $80 for a bottle of acetaminophen (like Tylenol®).
Your attorney will also look for evidence that the hospital billed double (“double/duplicate billing”) or is engaging in balance billing. This is an unethical practice in which the hospital simply bills the patient for the difference between the amount covered by the insurance provider and the total billed amount.
When you hire a medical bills negotiation attorney, you are retaining the services of a seasoned professional who is adept at reviewing hospital and doctor bills to determine where you may have been overcharged, billed more than double or balance billed. This means that your lawyer occupies a solid position from which to begin negotiations.
Are you drowning in medical bills? If so, you don’t need to lose any more sleep. Call Your Insurance Attorney instead to enlist the help of a hospital bills negotiation lawyer.
Your Insurance Attorney can step in to help you at any time during the process. Whether you have drained your savings in an effort to keep up with your medical bills or just received an unpleasant shock when you opened your mail today, Your Insurance Attorney is ready to review your case.
If you’re worried about having to pay an attorney when you’re already struggling to pay your medical bills, put that worry out of your mind. Your Insurance Attorney doesn’t accept a penny in payment from you unless we are able to prevail in your case.
This means that we are singularly focused on ensuring that your medical bills get reduced. You may get back some portion of the money you’ve already paid, and the money that you owe to the hospital may be reduced by a significant amount. Every situation is unique; that’s why you need to talk with a lawyer at Your Insurance Attorney today.
Medical bills negotiation is not the only area in which Your Insurance Attorney works on. We also focus on representing our clients before their insurance company or the at-fault party insurer in an accident.
This means that we may be able to not only reduce your medical bills, but also demonstrate to the insurance companies why they should be paying more on your claim.
Give Your Insurance Attorney a chance to review your case today.
