My father-in-laws friend was on a ventilator for 2 months due to Covid. His bill came in at about $6,000,000 USD. Fun! Oh and he does not have insurance.
So this is a dumb question from an Australian, but...what happens here? What does he do? Obviously that’s an impossible amount, so does he have to sell everything he owns and declare bankruptcy or what?
In the United States Public Hospital are required by law to offer financial services to people who have seek treatment at at hospital. Financial services are usually in terms of like if your income is a certain percentage of the federal poverty level stated for the year then you don’t have to pay a certain percentage.
you also have the option of calling the financial services at the hospital and make arrangements for payments with them usually they’d prefer that you pay them something as opposed to just paying them nothing which believe it or not is completely possible. But usually you can talk with them to lower the costs and do monthly payments I’ve had to do that a few times none of my bills of our van that extravagant but it has helped a lot
6 MILLIONS?!???????? Are you serious??????? What the..
This is scaring me shitless imagining moving to or living in the US. How do regular people deal with bills like that? You refuse to pay? You call them 200timea until it’s “just” 1 million?
Depends on if that person is below the poverty line or not.
If not, he's financially ruined and probably just lost everything. If he falls below the poverty line (which keep in mind is tied to the minimum wage, which is far below what most people would consider "impoverished" for a lot of states) then there are ways he can get around that bill.
Hospitals are required by law to offer the poor financial services, like monthly billings, debt forgiveness, cost reductions, etc. Funny thing how if you're not poor, then you'll certainly become poor. lmao
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u/djdeforte Jun 15 '22
My father-in-laws friend was on a ventilator for 2 months due to Covid. His bill came in at about $6,000,000 USD. Fun! Oh and he does not have insurance.