You might be able to fix a medical bill that doesn’t make sense or looks like it will break your budget with a simple phone call to the billing office.
That’s what a new study released in JAMA Health Forum on Friday says. A study from the University of Southern California found that more than three out of four people who complained about an expensive bill to a billing office said they got some kind of financial help, such as a price cut, a payment plan, or even the bill being canceled. The study also found that almost three quarters of people who complained about billing errors said the problems were fixed.
Medical bills that are too high “really do make a difference” in many situations, according to Erin Duffy, who led the study and is in charge of research training at the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics at USC. The study was based on a poll that more than 1,100 people in the U.S. filled out at the end of last year about their medical bills from the previous year.
Truth be told, a lot of people don’t fight their bills because they don’t believe it will help. Researchers from USC found that almost 40% of people who got a bad bill didn’t call the billing office. Most of those people said they didn’t do anything because they didn’t think it would change the bill.
The study comes out at a time when officials are looking for ways to keep Americans from getting too much medical debt. In June, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau suggested a rule that would remove medical bills from most credit reports. The bureau said that 15 million people in the U.S. have $49 billion in medical bills that are in collections and show up on their credit reports.
Most people in the U.S. have some kind of health insurance, but many have trouble paying for care because their deductibles and copays are so high. According to KFF, a health policy study nonprofit, about half of U.S. adults say they have trouble paying for medical costs and about a quarter say they have recently skipped or put off needed care because of the cost. KFF finds that more than 40% of people say they owe money on medical or dental bills.
But the new study shows that a lot of people can effectively speak up for themselves, and it doesn’t have to be their full-time job. According to the study, most people who called billing offices did so over the phone and talked to the office for less than an hour.
Some of the patients polled were able to negotiate the prices of services they had already gotten. “Most people don’t think of medical bills as something you can talk about,” Duffy said. The study found that 62% of people who tried to haggle said the price went down.
The study also shows how important it is to check hospital bills carefully for errors. The study found that common mistakes include billing twice or insurance companies denying claims that should be paid. A recent survey by the Commonwealth Fund found that 45% of insured people of working age said they recently got a medical bill or had to pay a copay for a service they thought their insurance would cover or be free. In the Commonwealth study, less than half of the people who said they had seen billing mistakes said they had also disputed them.
According to the USC study, differences in how much patients fight for themselves may be a factor in the rising inequality in medical debt. The study found that people with less schooling or financial knowledge, or who did not have health insurance, were less likely to dispute problematic bills. Duffy said that one possible answer would be for healthcare providers to let patients know about their payment options when they are billed.
Duffy said that most hospitals offer payment plans and financial help, but patients always have to call to find out more. Dollar For is a non-profit organization that helps people find out if they may be eligible for hospital discounts or bill forgiveness. They also help people fill out the forms for free.
A lot of states also have programs that help people who are having trouble with their health insurance. There is a list of services by state at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
