SPECIAL: 10 WAYS to REDUCE your HOSPITAL BILLS

[00:00:00] Look, the cost of basic health care in America is insane. And today I want to help our listeners by providing some very specific ways that you can fight against exorbitant medical bills and charges. Somebody get this guy some help!

[00:00:37] Many of my guests have extensive medical training and experience. Nothing stated in this podcast nor materials related to this podcast, including recommended websites, texts, graphics, images, or any other materials should be treated as a substitute for professional medical or psychological advice, diagnosis, or treatment. All listeners should consult with a medical professional, licensed mental health provider, or other health care provider if seeking medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Or, put more simply... If you need help like this guy, call your own doctor. Individuals and families in America are hesitating to take themselves or their loved ones to the

[00:01:03] emergency room because of the astronomical charges in many areas of the country. Private equity firms and large corporate interests have progressively muscled their way into the health care sector over the last decade plus, with costs continuing to increase. While insurance companies continually increase the number of claims that they deny. This care that you and your doctor, who at a minimum

[00:01:32] has been at it for nearly 10 years in order to earn their credential, decided was the best treatment. While many patients believe doctors and providers play a major role in this excessive cost, that's music to pharmaceutical companies and large corporate interest ears. We do not receive much training at all on understanding the costs to our patients of the care that we provide. So whether it is the hospital,

[00:02:01] the clinic, or the ER itself, or your insurance company, both ends of your interactions with the U.S. health care system involve a financial game of maximizing next quarter's profits and squeezing every last dollar out of you every chance that they get, bullying you, and essentially threatening you if you push back. Other countries are lapping us and laughing at us. You and I are paying

[00:02:31] separate fees to the physician that sees and actually treats us, who is typically employed by the hospital, but then we also pay a hospital fee on top of that physician fee or a facility fee. What the fuck? Basic services like a three-hour ER stay for a minor respiratory infection with no

[00:02:54] concerning vital signs, no need for an IV, just a basic chest x-ray that legitimately costs a two-digit number, aka less than $100, routinely is upcharged 5x, 10x, or even 25x, if not more. And we are being hit

[00:03:19] with the highest complexity visits. All of this without any sort of upfront or informed consent beforehand on what it is we're paying for. Look up the cost of basic services in the U.S. versus other countries, and it's just not right. Other countries look at our health care system and think it's absolutely asinine that a newborn child can get a bill separate from their mother

[00:03:49] for their delivery and hospital care. Again, nobody else in the world does this, and it leads to real people having to sacrifice what may be a critical or even life-saving visit or treatment because of the fear that they'll put themselves or their families into massive amounts of medical debt. So let's buck

[00:04:14] up here, not just complain about the broken system, but give you some specific solutions. Now, before I get to my list, on a very basic or general level, I'll offer you this one message. Do not give up. Don't give in to the bullying. Don't give in to the threats. Keep fighting with conviction your bill on both sides. Even if you have no idea what you're saying or what you're doing,

[00:04:44] there's nothing that can prevent you from fighting the bill against the hospital or the facility and keep fighting for your insurance company to cover more. They deny claims knowing most people will give up. They upcharge knowing most people will eventually pay. When I was in college, my roommates and I still all paid into a cable bill each month. Similar to monthly phone bills

[00:05:12] and charges, after a certain amount of time, they'll raise your rates without overtly notifying you. When you call them, which by the way is easier as a group or as a couple, if it's you and your spouse, to offset the time requirement for this, you just keep fighting. You tell them you were promised a lower rate or that you were not notified of the increase in the rate. You find any argument you

[00:05:40] can that will put them on the defensive or at a minimum delay the bill further. You threaten to report them to the Better Business Bureau or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or your local congressperson or state senator. When all that fails, you ask to speak to a supervisor. Then, if that fails, you ask to speak to their supervisor. Seriously, before any of the numbered list,

[00:06:11] just do not give up. Keep fighting. All right. So number one, usually one of the first steps, you get your bill. It's absurd. You're getting charged $8,000 for the ER visit for an x-ray and reassurance. You ask for an itemized receipt and the theme that you'll catch on to. You ask for it in

[00:06:35] writing. You do not want to ask for electronic records because they'll be a lot faster. You want to drag this process out as long as you possibly can, preventing them from being able to send you to collections too expeditiously. All right. Number two, compare the charges on your bill from the

[00:07:01] hospital, say, to fair market prices. There's a couple of websites that can help you with this. One is fairhealthconsumer.org and the other is Healthcare Blue Book. There you can insert the procedure on your itemized receipt or what's called the CPT code and you can compare it to the average

[00:07:24] cost or reasonable cost in your area for that same code. And that way, once you have your itemized receipt, the next step is to call and argue that the charges, if they are obscene or excessive, you can fight against it and say that they are not comparable to what would be a fair market price. The other thing you can do around the same time is also argue about informed consent on pricing.

[00:07:53] This is not likely to change your bill necessarily, but what it can do is it can offer you more time, offer you another kind of piece of evidence that you're somebody who's not going to give up. Okay. Number three, check your explanation of benefits from your insurance company for your

[00:08:17] insurance plan, just to make sure that there are no billing errors. One thing that I've noticed is when you call the billing department of the hospital, they always want to kick you over to your insurance company. And when you call your insurance company, they always want to kick you back to the billing department. So when you call your insurance company, have the data in front of you on what

[00:08:46] your explanation of benefits reveals, just to ensure that there are no billing errors. Or ideally, if you can get the billing department to resubmit your claim to the insurance company and or vice versa, this will significantly delay the final step that companies will take, which is to send you to a collections department.

[00:09:09] Number four, ask for the billing department to recode or downgrade your visit. Do whatever you can to delay, deny, and defend your position on the excess charges. Call early in the morning during non-peak hours

[00:09:30] and repeatedly insist on speaking to a supervisor. If the supervisor is not available, you make a note of that in writing. I usually send a message to my legal representative, not for them to do anything, just so there is a paper trail of everything that happens within these conversations. Note in writing

[00:09:56] any transgressions that occur. There were a couple of times where I was told that I was being sent to a supervisor. I got kicked back to the main operator who said hello and then immediately hung up the phone. Now, I don't know if this was intentional at all, but you get a little bit more and more skeptical about it when it happens a couple of times. And then when the only time you're actually able to speak to a

[00:10:25] supervisor is by threatening to send a dispute letter to the billing department. Okay, number five, after you have repeatedly asked to speak to supervisors and maybe still are running up against a brick wall, asked to speak to the director of medical services. Again, you may not have a clue what you're talking

[00:10:51] about, but it's another way of trying to get somebody on the phone that you do have the right to speak to about your bill that probably doesn't have as much time to take calls from people calling about their hospital bills. Whatever concerns you have, have them ready. And it may be revoicing the same concerns you've already voiced to somebody lower on that totem pole. Start over with the

[00:11:17] director of medical services or with each supervisor. Each step up the ladder, it's going to be more and more likely that it is somebody who has the power and ability to actually reduce your bill, to get rid of you the annoying person who would dare to call repeatedly about reducing a, you know, multiple

[00:11:39] thousands of dollars bill for some basic services. Number six, kind of stepping up here, file a formal billing dispute in writing and should certainly be done if the hospital refuses to respond to stating that the charges are excessive and you can continually request a new review. And same thing, file this

[00:12:03] dispute also with your insurance company. If they processed what you believe is an overinflated claim, you send these letters in the mail and you demand they prevent your bill from going to collections while you are negotiating on it. You put all of that in writing and you request to receive certified mail

[00:12:28] back again because that will buy you a little bit more time. Number seven, see if you can negotiate the bill. Now you can do this on your own or you could consider working with what's called a medical billing advocate, somebody that does this for a living. Now, if you're going to work with a medical billing advocate, then you probably want to make sure that the bill is pretty excessive because you're going to have to pay a fee to

[00:12:56] the medical billing advocate as well. Sometimes you can offer to pay everything up front and get somewhere between 20 to 40% off. Other times, you know, you may be able to negotiate some sort of payment plan. Pay little bits at a time over a long period of time without interest. They are not allowed to charge you interest on your medical bill. And throughout that time, you can continue to fight the rest of the bill.

[00:13:26] Number eight, file a complaint with state and federal agencies. Anybody you can think of, you can write the same letter and just send it to multiple different entities. The state attorney general, like I mentioned before, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Better Business Bureau. Again, probably doesn't

[00:13:49] have much ability to do anything here, but you are backing up what you have threatened the billing department that you will do. You're backing it up with action. If the company is not for profit, file a complaint with the IRS regarding their compliance with community benefit standards. Again, your congressperson, your state senator, whoever you can involve on your side of things, whether they're

[00:14:16] actually involved or they're just somebody you've sent information to, involve them. Lastly, last resort here, involve an attorney. Again, this is going to require a financial investment on your part. If you take this step, factor that in financially to what you're trying to fight. If you're trying to fight a $500 bill and you're hiring an attorney, the juice may not be worth the squeeze. But if you're fighting a $5,000 bill

[00:14:45] and hiring an attorney for just a couple of hours, then it very well, you may save money overall at the end of the day. If the hospital or the billing department ignores you or they threaten to send you to collections, you may need legal intervention. And before any official legal intervention, sometimes just a simple demand letter from an attorney can prompt the hospital to take you a little bit more seriously.

[00:15:14] And again, I got to reiterate this. Document everything that happens somewhere where it can be time-stamped, whether that be a text message or an email, word document that you email to yourself, have it in writing what has transpired. If that fails the letter, then you can consider with your lawyer actually

[00:15:39] filing a lawsuit for unfair billing practices. If you can prove price gouging, then you should have a favorable result from this lawsuit. Some patients successfully file small claim court cases against hospitals to force them to reasonably bill. And I'm telling you, if more and more of us Americans that are

[00:16:04] being stuck with these exorbitant bills are doing this, then we start to drive system change. And then lastly, number 10, in order to prevent collections, you may want to make a partial good faith payment. While you continue to dispute the bill, you can negotiate, like I said, a long-term payment plan, knowing that they're not allowed to charge interest on these hospital bills. That's a big

[00:16:33] way people are kind of silently threatened, knowing that an unpaid bill may make it their way onto their credit report and may limit their ability to purchase other things like a home or a car. So that's my 10 recommendations for reducing your hospital bills. Again, more than anything, you just keep fighting.

[00:16:56] You keep delaying the bill and putting good arguments out there. If you have nothing else, argue that the prices are absurd and that they are unreasonable. Remember, hospitals often inflate charges for insured patients, especially if you have a high deductible. One thing that I've done to really delay my own

[00:17:23] hospital bill or my kids' hospital bills is I've asked for the billing department to run my entire claim without insurance and to send me an itemized receipt of that. You'd be surprised at how often the uninsured rate is actually lower than the insured rate, which doesn't make any reasonable sense considering on insurance you're paying into a premium every single month and then you're paying on top of

[00:17:52] that into a deductible that many Americans and especially families won't meet on an annual basis. So you have nothing to lose by asking the billing department to send you a bill for the cost of these services without insurance. You may not utilize it at all, but again, it's another way to push this escapade out a little bit further. Persistence is the key. Hospitals, billing departments,

[00:18:22] they hope that you'll give up. Most people do. Most people cannot deal with the stress of having this bill hanging over their heads. So maybe take a little bit of time to meditate on it, to reduce your anxiety, to remind that automatic part of your brain that will continue to fire information about how you have this thing that you must do being held over your head, that it might affect your credit, that it might

[00:18:50] affect your financial well-being, all kinds of other automatic thoughts that may pop in that are true, not true, or some degree of true. Persistence is the key. They know that so many people give up on these things. The longer you persist, the more likely it is that you are going to get your bill reduced.

[00:19:11] And then last thing, document everything. I had a couple of extremely frustrating situations where I was sent to a supervisor and I just ended up getting kicked back to the operator and actually hung up on, despite the fact that they took down my callback number within 30 seconds of me getting on

[00:19:36] the line with the initial representative. These things might happen. Try to take them in stride. But if any problems arise in your direct communications with the billing department, with your insurance company, document it so that it is now in written history. And if I need to go back and reference it, I can. Everybody that you talk to, take their name down, put a timestamp on when you

[00:20:03] made that phone call so that you can always refer back to it as needed. Hopefully this has been a little bit of a different type of episode, a little bit shorter and more direct in ways that you can help yourself despite the broken system that we live and operate within. Thanks for listening. Thanks again for watching and or listening. If you're passionate about the subjects that I discuss on

[00:20:31] the channel, do me a favor and like, comment, subscribe, do whatever you can to make your voice heard that these are problems that must be addressed in our society. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, I want to hear them. Feel free to reach out on social media or email us at

[00:20:56] renegadesyke at gmail.com. And if you'd like to be a guest of the show, or you have a connection to somebody that you think would be a good guest, let us know. Thanks again for listening.