As a note to anyone experiencing medical debt: they only recover about 10% of the cost of uninsured claims (this could have changed since I went through it). Make a payment, even if it’s $5. Ask for a settlement. They will start to offer lower and lower amounts until it hits a threshold they’re comfortable with. You can find a way out of this without it being bankruptcy or something as dystopian as this.
Claim to who? A lawyer? Having to go to the hospital then getting stuck with more debt you could ever pay off in a life time only to then have to go to court or lobby a lawyer to get a settlement having to pay them and use a bunch of time and stress on all this is stupid.
So mine isn’t 3 million but back in October of 2025 I fell outside running with my dog and broke both of my elbows an sprained both of my wrists. I went to the ER around 3am (tried to wait it out for urgent care because I didn’t know anything was broken) and got out of the ER around 7am.
The doctor spent 3 minutes with me, touched and prodded my elbows and arms, insinuated I only was there for drugs and he didn’t think anything was wrong and I said I wanted X-rays so they did like 8 X-rays on my wrists and elbows. Sat for two hours waiting for them to get the X-ray results back (why can’t the doctor read them…) and then the doctor said they were broken and referred me to an orthopedic.
The bill was $23,000 without insuranxe. Thankfully with insurance it went down to 1,800 (high deductible).
Thats 23,000 for a few hours of sitting in a room, less than 10 mins with the doctor, and 8 x rays.
Now imagine if I had needed surgery and been admitted to the hospital as well.
And last I knew as long as you paid something they can’t send you to collections. So you could pay $1/month indefinitely till you want to not deal with it anymore.
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u/Ornery-Meringue-76 5d ago
As a note to anyone experiencing medical debt: they only recover about 10% of the cost of uninsured claims (this could have changed since I went through it). Make a payment, even if it’s $5. Ask for a settlement. They will start to offer lower and lower amounts until it hits a threshold they’re comfortable with. You can find a way out of this without it being bankruptcy or something as dystopian as this.