Can you ignore a medical bill?

[ck4829]

Not long ago, Catherine did something many other people have done. She ignored a medical bill.

Catherine, who asked me to use only her middle name to protect her privacy, is a white-collar worker in Pennsylvania. “About 10—Jesus, 12—years ago, I was diagnosed with Crohn’s,” she told me, which led her to rack up debt, some of it related to her use of a $46,000-a-year IV-infusion drug. After her mother’s death from brain cancer in 2022, she decided to get her life in order. “I’m on this big journey,” she told me. “I had bills going back to an urgent-care visit I made in college. I was going to get on top of it.”

Yet when she started calling hospitals, doctor’s offices, and collection agencies, she realized that nobody could tell her what she was paying for and why she was being charged a certain amount. Some bills had been forgiven; some were miscoded. “I was like, I’m not going to just send you $500 for this random you-know-what,” she told me. “My takeaway was: Nobody knows what these bills are for.” So she did not pay them. She tossed new ones in the trash. She sent unknown numbers straight to voicemail. Getting on top of her debts meant ignoring them.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/10/ignore-medical-bills/680047/

Medical bills are garbage numbers, we should ALL ignore them.

http://medicalbills.pbworks.com/w/page/151163349/Medical%20bills%20are%20made%20up%20numbers