Can a doctor refuse to treat you if you owe them a 60 dollar copay?
Legally speaking. I owe my doctor 60 dollars for a copay. I went into the exam room, sat there, took a test, and then the office manager comes in and says the doctor can not come in and see you until you pay your 60 dollars. Can they legally refuse to treat me?
What happens if you can't pay medical bills in America? Can they deny you care, being a citizen, or place you out of the country?
You will hear a lot of horror stories about American healthcare, here is the truth from my observations while working in healthcare for over 30 years.-If you are uninsured, you always have the option of going to a local Emergency Room, they will treat you for your illness or injury. If you need to be hospitalized you will be, if you need surgery you will get it, if you have cancer, you will get Chemo or what ever else you need.-You will get medical bills, you can arrange to make payments on them, even if you owe tens of thousands, you can still go back to the Emergency room and get care, what you owe on your previous bill does not matter, you will get the healthcare you need.-Hospitals are happy to take what you can pay, the important part is to pay something consistently on your bill. The hospital knows you are never going to pay it off, but, something is better than nothing.-It is possible that you could be turned over to collections, I do not know of this happening to anyone who made arrangements to pay on the debt, it could happen though.-If you go to the ER, it is also possible that you could be transferred to a different facility if they decide you are stable, In most cities their is a hospital that is considered the “hospital of last resort” I have never seen this either…to much liability, if they are wrong and you die in transport, the cost to the hospital will be much higher than it would be to just take care of you.-85% of the population has some type of health coverage, their are people that are under insured meaning high deductibles, expensive premiums, and excessive co-pays. Most people have affordable good healthcare.-Of the remaining 15%, many simply do not want to pay for health insurance, or, are mentally ill, or, addicted, or have some other reason they are not insured.Their is room for improvement, but do not believe all the horror stories.
What happens if a tourist woman can't pay the medical bill for giving birth in the USA and Canada?
My daughter was born in the US and we left a month after she was born. From my experience, no one will stop you as you are discharged from the hospital and detain you or the baby until they receive payment. The hospital, doctors, labs and anyone else will simply mail you their bills and expect payment. In many cases, you can call the healthcare providers that billed you and negotiate a lower fee, especially because you are not insured and are a self-pay patient.In the hospital’s case, we received two bills: the c-section delivery bill was $ 37,000. Because we didn’t have insurance, they gave us a discount and brought the bill down to $ 5,500. You read that right. If an insurance company was paying the bill, they would have paid $ 31,500 completely unnecessarily. The second bill was for my daughter’s NICU treatment. The subtotal was approximately 10K, but the discount brought the bottom line to $ 1100. No wonder the healthcare system is so messed up over there.I talked to the hospital and they agreed to charge my credit card $ 500 per month until the bills were paid, and they did just that.The anesthesiology practice sent me a bill for $4500. I called them and ended up paying $ 2000 instead.I may have missed a few bills and they could be sitting on the desk of a collection agency rep, gathering dust for the past two years, but I don’t think they will issue a kill-on-sight order for a couple of thousand. In the worst case scenario, I’ll avoid setting foot in the state she was born in for the rest of my life, and that state being New Jersey… I guess you can see where this is headed.In theory, I could have torn up all the bills that came in the mail, stiffed my wife’s OB/GYN for the balance of his fee, and flown home with a “free” US passport for my daughter. But I paid almost everything they sent me because 1) the medical staff did a great job and deserved to be paid; 2) I essentially “bought” my daughter a US passport and a mere 11K in total is a paltry sum to pay for that; and 3) the total was only about one-third more than what I would have paid for delivery under similar circumstances in our home country of Turkey.