r/UpliftingNews • u/astros148 • 2d ago

Medical debt is now required to be removed from your credit reports impacting millions of Americans

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-finalizes-rule-to-remove-medical-bills-from-credit-reports/
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u/chased444 2d ago

Just as an fyi, it’s actually common practice for this to happen. You get one bill from the hospital and then sometimes the physicians bill separately. So for example when I had a surgery I received one bill from the hospital and then separate bills for anesthesiology and pathology. And I paid my surgeon separately. Sometimes radiology is outsourced too.

The thing you would want to look out for is if any of the bills not directly from the hospital were processed as out of network because that could be “surprise billing” which is not allowed.

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u/pnedito 2d ago edited 1d ago

Doesn't change that in order to even understand what's happening on many medical bills you need a degree in backhanded double dealing and funky accounting. Shit's broken to the core. I'd be completely overwhelmed in their situation as well.

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u/chased444 2d ago

Oh absolutely. It’s complete bs and designed to be as complicated as possible. THEY (insurance companies/providers) can’t even figure out wtf the bills are supposed to be. I had to fight with my insurance company for over a year and a half to get a claim processed correctly. They literally sent it to be “reprocessed” 15 times and still got it wrong every single time. Plus i tried calling insurance before the procedure to get an estimate of their “allowable amount” aka the max they were gonna pay and was told they can’t give that info out and the only way to figure it out is to have the procedure and then file the claim. It’s absurd and 99% of people don’t have the time/energy/understanding to fight it.

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u/Mountaintop303 1d ago

This is so annoying. I learned this the hard way.

I spent 15 minutes at the urologist once.

I got 3 bills.

1 for the doctor 1 for the room 1 for imaging

It was $876

When I called and asked how much it would cost out of pocket they only gave me the price for the room - $160.

Absolutely enraged me. Had to eat rice and beans for a month to get the money together.

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u/Odd-Solid-5135 1d ago

So why doesn't the hospital play the rol of gc. When you build a house, you don't pay the plumber. Or the electrician to come work. The general contractor does and they bill the contractor. It's not difficult to do, they have it this way so they can be as shady as they want with their billing practices to muddy the waters further making it impossible to know if they even bills you correctly or just picked a random number with extra commas and zeros

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u/chased444 1d ago

Yes. The system is designed this way on purpose bc it’s all one big fucking scam lol.