Michalla

I can’t really answer legal questions, but having a hospital bill myself, I can share my experience with you and it may give you some insight?

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When I had JUST turned 18 (a few months after), I took a trip out of state for a funeral. At the funeral I ended up feeling sick so I told my mom I was gonna go find I restroom or garbage, I got in the hallway and remember seeing a guy that worked there and asking if there was a garbage and he picked up a tiny one so I said “a bigger one, I feel like I’m gonna get sick” and as soon as he turned, next thing I knew I bashed my head into the wall and their carpeted cement floor and ended up having a grand mal seizure which was why I felt so ill. My mom ran out of the funeral to me as well as a couple other people and some people that worked there and they had to call an ambulance since I was seizing. The hospital was RIGHT across the street and I still got a GIANT bill ($7,000) in the mail for the ambulance ride🤦🏻‍♀️ at the hospital, I had to get 8 stitches in my face to close two huge gashes which was obviously an emergency and needed to be done. After it was done, the hospital tells us they don’t accept out of state insurance meaning they wouldn’t even take my insurance information. The bill has been on my credit report ever since then and after about 2 years, the hospital sold the bill to collections and the agency more than doubled the cost of the bill. Its been sold to multiple collections agencies and the price has been changed multiple times along the way. But get this, it’s actually illegal for hospital bills to be sold to collections agencies because it’s a violation of your HIPAA rights. I’ve disputed it multiple times using different reasoning, I stated they they have no proof that it belongs to me (because since they aren’t the hospital, they shouldn’t have my records without violating a law in order to be able to prove it’s me), I stated that it’s a violation of HIPAA, and I’ve also stated that the amount was inaccurate, but it always comes back with “the consumer disagrees,” “we’ve verified that it’s your debt,” “we’ve verified that the information is accurate” and what ever else, so my next step is going to be just to simply mail a HIPAA letter to the current collections company that owns it saying that I want it removed since it violates a law.

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Once the hospital sells the debt, it’s no longer there’s and they can’t do anything or get you in any trouble over it because they’ve already been paid by another company for it so another company is going to do what ever THEY can do to get money out of you, which is actually illegal. But after 7 years, it’ll fall off your credit report all together anyways. If you can’t pay it, you could always try settling for a lower amount, making a payment plan, or just wait and see if they sell it to a collections company because after then it’d be off of their hands and they can’t get you in any legal trouble for it.

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