It may sound impossible when you’re being hounded by debt collectors and medical practices demanding that you pay, but there are methods for how to negotiate a hospital bill down. The same goes for medical bills, lab bills, radiology bills and so much more. There are ways that you can work with a hospital’s billing department, or a health insurance company’s dispute resolution team–things that can save you thousands.
The important thing is to be engaged with your medical services every part of the way, starting before the procedure if possible (we know emergencies can happen that you have no control over) all the way to negotiating with the insurance at the end.
So what are ways to negotiate medical bills?
Shop Around Before You Get Treatment
So often we feel like we’re trapped in a bubble of the providers who are approved by our health insurance, but there are often services that are required where you’re more than welcome to shop around.
Some of the biggest places this crops up are in labs and radiology. Oftentimes we’re told to go to a certain place to get an MRI or X-ray, but we can actually call around to get better prices. Just because one facility may charge $1200 for an MRI doesn’t mean another might charge $750.
Make sure that you always call around and see if you can get the best price–before you get the procedure done.
Talk to Your Insurance BEFORE You Get the Procedure Done
Often, there are elective procedures–and we don’t mean elective procedures like plastic surgery, but procedures that you don’t necessarily need. Do you really need six months of physical therapy when two months and a gym membership will do the job? Do you really need routine inpatient treatment when there are outpatient options available? The doctors are going to prescribe the best-case scenario for you–and that’s good–but sometimes it’s better to talk to your insurance first and see what they’ll cover.
For example, your insurance coverage might cover fifteen visits to physical therapy and nothing more. And if you’re merely following doctor’s orders to have twenty-five visits you may be stunned when you get a steep medical bill for the uncovered last ten. Get the Explanation of Benefits (EOB) before you start.
Request an Itemized Bill
Whenever you’re hit with a big medical bill, get the receipts and go through them with a fine-toothed comb. A lot of medical debt could be avoided if we just verified that the procedures that they claim we need are procedures that we actually got. Going through, line-by-line, you can find medical procedures that were either never done or were billed incorrectly.
It’s not an easy road, but if you’re looking at thousands of dollars that may end up on a credit card, you want to make sure there are no billing errors.
The way to do this is ask specifically for an itemized bill that includes CPT codes. CPT codes are billing codes associated with every procedure that happens at the clinic or hospital. Once you get the CPT codes, you can do a Google search for them and find out the Medicare price for each one of those procedures. This is the price you need to use to negotiate with!
Once you have the Medicare price, go to your medical provider and tell them the prices that you have found, and negotiate a payment plan. The providers will indeed be willing to negotiate with you, because they know that, first, the price is fair, and second, some money in their pockets is better than the bill going to collections.
Always, always, get an itemized bill.
Look Into Financial Assistance Programs
Most hospitals, and some healthcare networks, have financial assistance programs. Trust us, you’re not the first person to struggle with paying their medical bills and you won’t be the last. These organizations know this so they will help you find ways to get a payment plan so your monthly payments aren’t overwhelming.