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Medical Bills

just.his.wife's picture

Submitted by just.his.wife on Tue, 09/25/2012 - 8:17am

Earlier this morning I saw a post about medical bills for someone who was not insured. Can not find the post now, but an idea for those on the board who themselves or (s)kids are uninsured or underinsured.

If you dont have insurance and have to take kids/ yourself to the doctor there are two things you can do to lower your costs.

1) If it is a hospital or a physicians office that is owned by or affilated with a hospital they should have a discount program. Most of these programs are 1 simple sheet of paper to fill out and state how much the household income is. Based off household income, the hospitals/ doctors will approve a discount off the stated prices from 10% off to literally the services being free due to low household income.
Don't feel bad for the hospital/doctors if they offer the services free, they keep track of the free services and get a tax break for the free care they offer through the programs.

2) If you do not qualify for the discount program: Offer to pay 100% of the Medicare allowable for services rendered.

Typically physicians bill out at 200% of what Medicare's fee schedule is. 99% of physicians will accept 100% of medicare fee schedule from a self pay patient: what this means for you is your bill gets cut in half (essentially, sometimes more, sometimes a little less than half)

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imjustthemaid's picture

Submitted by imjustthemaid on Tue, 09/25/2012 - 11:19am

That was me!! No insurance and it sucks!! I went to the finance dept of the hospital and applied for free care for just DD10 and listed her deadbeat dad as the father. Of course he is unemployed so they will not get far with him. They said I will find out in two to three weeks but I really need to know sooner!! We have an appt for Friday to see a specialist at Children's Hospital in Boston and that is really expensive. They said she might even need surgery. Of course if we get denied we will have to just make payment plans and figure it out because I will not let DD suffer because of the greedy doctors and hospitals. They are very good about giving a self pay discount but in this case its going to be so much money anyway. Keeping my fingers crossed!!

DH owns a business and although he has been making no money and we are totally broke all the time we don't quality for free or discounted care. I only applied for free care for DD who is not his daughter so I didn't mention him at all. When we had health insurance it was $1500 a month and that was the cheapest plan for a family of 5 that I could find. We in no way have that kind of money now. We would be homeless. What kills me is I see so many people qualify for free care that have not worked a day in their life and have not paid into the system. I have worked my ass off my entire life and this is what I get for it. It seems like BM and all of her friends just sit around and collect their welfare and food stamps and free health care. They don't look for work, they are at a bar every night and the people that really need it don't get it. We could use some help right now.

just.his.wife's picture

Submitted by just.his.wife on Tue, 09/25/2012 - 11:34am

Call your local medicaid office and apply for "Emergency Medicaid" which effectively means, you have an emergency, a high dollar emergency medical issue. Typically they will authorize the child for medicaid for the emergency situation (the broken bone) and any care related to it (xrays, prescriptions, doctors, surgery etc).

Call Boston childrens now, I KNOW they have a discount/ uninsured program! Have them send you the paperwork and you can submit it prior to the appointment.

Additionally, some states have low income insurance available to kids (Healthy Kids) where if you are not eligible for Medicaid: you are elgible for low cost health insurance for dependant children (think $20/ month to cover each kid)