MANAGING MEDICAL DEBT FEATURING BUCKS & CENTS

In my last post titled How I Survived Medical Debt I shared my story of an unexpected health crisis in my own life. A health crisis that had caused me added physical and financial stress. Throughout these many struggles I experienced, my knowledge of how to handle it next time has increased.

Today I work in medical billing and work personally to get insurance claims paid. I have some first hand knowledge that I am always happy to share. I love to try to help others avoid mistakes that they might not realize they are making. Helping others understand what their personal financial responsibility is and how they should respond. In doing this I always recommend trying to understand your own insurance coverage. Each healthcare plan varies greatly and so does your responsibility with each individual insurance plan. Knowing your insurance plan coverage and benefits can empower you more as the patient. You can make choices based on what and who are covered by your plan.

Right before I shared my own story last week I asked on Twitter for others willing to share their healthcare crisis financial stories and what they learned. At that time I had a fellow blogger reach out and offer to share his story.

Our story today is from Bryan the blogger behind Bucksandcents.com

For almost a decade, my family was a one income family with significant medical conditions, cash flow problems, and financial challenges.

We had two houses, private tuition, and a lot of other bills to weather during a decade long-recession.

During this time we had two boys. My oldest son had febrile seizures which started at birth and continued. Additionally, he developed OCD and severe anxiety at a young age. We would have to call EMS from time to time to come treat the seizures.

More medically severe, my youngest son developed an unheard of medical condition known as Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome at 18 months. There is no cure for this medical condition. Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome (CVS) according to the MAYO Clinic is described as:

"Cyclic vomiting syndrome is characterized by episodes of severe vomiting that have no apparent cause. Episodes can last for hours or days and alternate with symptom-free periods. Episodes are similar, meaning that they tend to start at the same time of day, last the same length of time, and occur with the same symptoms and intensity."

These vomiting episodes would occur about 4 to 5 times a year. They would start early morning, around 5am and repetitive vomiting would continue all morning. We would initially try to treat these episodes at home for a few hours.

Most of the time this was unsuccessful and we would have to go to ER which would treat with IV fluids and Zofran. That was successful.

During this time, we had $200 medical bill copays for each ER visit, not to mention sometimes ambulatory services were not always covered. Those ran from $500-$700 a pop.

Our city would cover one a year, and then after that they started to bill for ambulatory services.

This also put a significant strain, not only financially on our family, but also how we lived our daily life. We were more cautions about family outings where we may get stuck in traffic, such as flying or vacationing. We just did not do these things.

My youngest did finally outgrow this severe condition for the most part, but it took a tremendous strain on my family.

Dealing with unexpected medical conditions which become a part of your daily life as it relates to a family can be significant.

My spouse and I never talked about or communicated on finances. Not communicating about these routine medical financial issues proved significantly disastrous in hindsight.

My advice is that communication is so important with your partner (both financial and non-financial) because if you don't do this, you end up formatting a financial and life plan alone. Significant family medical conditions can easily unthread the fibers of a family structure. By not having regular communication with your partner unbonds your family structure faster.

Bottom line: Take the time to communicate with your partner on all things relating to your family, financial and non-financial. You may find that it will improve the overall health for ALL your family members.

About Me:

Hi…I’m Bryan!  For 15 years, I lived a “Keeping up with the Joneses” lifestyle, made debt-driven purchases, and lost control of my finances.  I stopped saving for retirement during most of those 15 years.  The daily life I was living became riddled with stress and financial anxiety.

Then one day I woke up and I could not live that lifestyle anymore and made drastic changes to my financial life.

I went from paycheck to paycheck to profiting $30,000 a year!

I started Bucks & Cents to empower people to change their financial lives.  If I can do it other people can too!

This site is a general personal finance site that has resources on making money, working at home jobs, and business ideas.  These resources have changed my life, and they can change your life for the better too.

Credentials:

I have been employed as a Financial Manager for almost 20 years.

I hold a BA and a Master of Public Administration and have managed budgets in the range of $8.0 Million to over $500.0 Million.

Additionally, I have developed budgetary valuing systems and have worked in places such as State and County Budget Offices.

I have also assisted individuals and families on getting their finances back on track.

Currently I am also a licensed Realtor working on wealth building strategies that involve real estate investing and rentals.

Thank you so much for sharing your advice with us today Bryan. Here are some great articles that Bryan wrote over on BucksandCents.com

For Real Estate and building long-term wealth:

bucksandcents.com/housing-cooperative

bucksandcents.com/section-8-landlord

bucksandcents.com/budget-your-money

For quick wins at making money:

bucksandcents.com/best-cash-back-apps

bucksandcents.com/who-buys-used-appliances-near-me

COMMUNICATION IS KEY!

As a medical biller I can definitely say that Bryan is correct this can really affect you if you do not communicate well. Communication is so important between you and a partner as well as you and the healthcare staff, the hospital billing department and the Insurance company. Never ignore phone call or any sort of letters that you receive from them. Follow up on everything until you get the answers that you need. COMMUNICATION IS KEY!

My closing thoughts

My best advice on handling these situations is always that more frequent communication is always best. Communication between you and your insurance company or you and the hospital billing department is usually best.

Keeping communication lines open between you and your healthcare provider or Insurance company can be critical. This can prevent you from receiving bills that you otherwise would not have. I recommend verifying upon receipt of any bill that your name, address, date of birth and Insurance are all correct. These things although they might seem small can cause major issues getting your claims paid.

If the Insurance company or hospital has a small error in your identifying information you could end with billing issues. Stay on top of this and you can greatly decrease your chances of any major billing issues resulting in larger balances billed to you in error or owed by you due to failure to communicate.

Communication and honesty are important in dealing with medical bills. If your income and expenses make it a struggle to pay a medical bill pick up the phone and call the billing department. You can ask about payment plans or even financial assistance that might be available for someone who is struggling to pay their medical bills.