Redditor Managed To Reduce Hospital Bill From $5,000 To $26 By Doing Something Over The Top
Louise Peralta
When any bill gets handed to you, do you just look at the total and pay whatever the amount is?
You’re a very lucky person if you are able to do so. But not everyone can afford to be so nonchalant.
Maybe it’s something that I got from the older generation, but it’s become a hobby to look through the bill and check all the items listed there before actually paying. There are no issues most of the time, but I’ve gotten restaurant bills with a missing item or with a wrong item included in them.
When it comes to more complicated bills, like the unfortunate instance of a hospital visit, handling the bill involves tedious steps that not everyone is capable of enduring.
But that’s no issue for this very dedicated person.
“AITA for how I fought my boyfriend's medical bill, going 'too far?'”
Honestly, when it comes to doing anything to save money, I don’t think “too far” exists unless you do anything that can jeopardize your own health or something illegal.
This Redditor didn’t jeopardize anyone’s health though, she just admittedly went “all out” to settle her boyfriend’s hospital bill. The boyfriend didn’t explicitly ask for help; OP just had experience with settling the bill because she’d done it before, so she offered to help.
What the boyfriend didn’t know were the lengths that OP was willing to go to to reduce his hospital bill, which went from $5,000 to $26. And, as OP wrote, “Yep, twenty-six f-ckin dollars.”
Of course, OP’s first step was to have her boyfriend call the hospital to authorize her to handle the bill and access his medical records. The second thing she did was ask for an itemized bill and did her own research to check if the prices they were given were fair. This move was highly applauded by other Redditors who work in Medical Billing.
After comparing the prices, OP called the billing department to dispute the bill but was turned away, as the department supposedly only collects the bills. She was told that she needed to contact the admin to dispute the bill.
Unsuccessful with her calls not going through to anyone qualified to handle the dispute, OP went on the internet to search for the hospital’s board of directors and managers and got their e-mails.
“Got 30 emails of the most influential people at the hospital, plus the hospital's investors,” OP wrote. “every day would send a few emails describing how they billed my 'client' at seven times over the fair price for services rendered, and how their billing department, customer service department, and the growing list of management I'd emailed, had failed to address the issue.”
OP wrote a sternly worded e-mail to a few more people and finally succeeded in reducing her boyfriend’s hospital bill after sending about 60 emails since she started this endeavor.
The boyfriend was ecstatic about the good news, but he couldn’t contain his curiosity and asked OP about how she settled the ridiculous bill. OP said that she just had to send a couple of e-mails a day. With his curiosity still unsatisfied, the boyfriend asked to see what was written in the e-mails.
And that’s when the boyfriend freaked out and told OP that she went too far and that he asked for her to “dispute a bill, not basically threaten and harass a whole damn hospital for weeks.”
Naturally, Reddit tagged the poster as not the a-hole here. Some are even wondering if OP considered doing this kind of thing professionally.
I’d have to agree with this one comment though.
“NTA, but you are too powerful and will probably be nerfed in the next patch.”
I can only hope to have OP’s tenacity and dedication. But what do you guys think?
Read the original post below.
AITA for how I fought my boyfriend's medical bill, going "too far"?
by u/dingussdaisy in AmItheAsshole
