More Patients Are Letting Medical Industry Raid Their Credit Cards Rather Than Checking Accounts
Americans are choosing plastic over paper when it comes to paying off the nearly $300 billion they rack up annually in medical charges — the leading cause of bankruptcy — every year, CNNMoney.com reported earlier this month.
The effect is customers are only sinking themselves deeper into debt as they scramble to keep themselves healthy enough to earn more money to pay off the cards:
"Out-of-pocket health care spending was already increasing in good times," said Bruce Carlson, publisher with health care market research firm Kalorama Information. "Now with high unemployment, consumers have to reach into their pockets even more to fund their health care."
The story goes on to say customers are also skipping out on bills altogether, rendering hospitals and doctors all the more willing to take credit card payments. Which is great for credit card companies, other than the fact that they're customers are defaulting on their payments more often.
Can't pay your doctor? Charge it! [CNNMoney]
(Photo: romulusnr)
Post a comment
Comments:
@neost: Do you have dental insurance? If your daughter is going to need more work done on her teeth, look into getting a flexible spending account. They will take a pre-set amount out of your paycheck, before the taxes are taken out. That might help with some of the cost.
As opposed to getting the country even more massively in debt with socialized medicine.
@neost:
If the work doesn't need to be done, don't do it - if she REALLY needed the dental work, then you are lucky that they would extend financing to you.
@neost: I had a similar dental adventure recently, totalling about $6,000. I'm quite grateful to have dental insurance and parents that could pay.
When it comes down to it though, you (and your daughter) should be happy that you took care of it. Most dental problems only get worse with time.
Also, even without insurance, semi-annual dental visits are your friend! Now that she's all fixed up, make sure she keeps it up.
Yeah, like those other awful countries with socialized medicine, much lower health care costs, and better outcomes.
Several years ago I was held hostage in a dentist's chair while he tried to browbeat me into getting braces. Yes I probably need braces, but I was there for an abcessed tooth and was in extreme pain with half my face swollen up like a balloon. I was literally balling my eyes out while insisting I. DID. NOT. WANT. BRACES. I finally agreed to talk to his 'office manager' about payment arrangements. Once in the cubicle I was offered several loans to choose from. I promptly asked to call my husband so he could pick me up as I refused to take out a loan for braces that I REFUSED. I'm surprised she could understand me I was crying so hard.
My dear, sweet (6' 230), hubby came in, kicked butt and took names while proclaiming loudly for EVERYONE to hear that he wanted to know why the Dr. wouldn't treat me unless I agreed to dental work I didn't want and wasn't giving me anything for the pain. They hastily showed him back to where I was and the doctor agreed to do the work I needed, not what he wanted to do. I had to ask for a prescription for antibiotics before I left, too. And this doctor's slogan was 'gentle dental care'. My foot.
I thoroughly believe I would still be sitting there if hubby hadn't threatened to call the state dental board or some such if they didn't treat me or let me go so I could find a real dentist. All so he could get a percenetage from the loans, I presume.
@wrjohnston91283: Roots canals are rarely ever the kind of thing that can wait. The tooth is infected, and the infection can only get worse and possibly spread.
Same thing with fillings, though not quite as bad. And if a cavity goes untreated it could easily become a situation that needs a root canal. $120 filling now vs. $1,700 root canal later? I'll take the filling.
I guess I'll be the grammar police...
It is "their" not "they're" in the last sentence.
The thing is, this could actually be, by Consumerist standards, the most sensible approach to the situation--they're making their medical costs unsecured debt, rather than risking the secured stuff by paying off medical instead of mortgage, etc.
@neost:
Phone about and negotiate. It's how I found my present dentist. He's great at the work and charged about half of those prices for the same amount of work.
Considering "there's gold in them thar hills!" (good) dentists are most interested in having a new patient that will give them good income for a long time rather than overcharging and having the patient once.
@I Love New Jersey: It is much better for the government to owe a trillion than for all of us to collectively owe 10 trillion to the health industry.
I hope you're not referring to Canada, where healthcare has become such a national disgrace the government regularly takes over hospitals that can't meet the budgetary constraints and routine things like stitches take half a day to pass from waiting room to seeing a doctor.
@I Love New Jersey: The House version under consideration now is fully paid for over the next 10 years. Compare and contrast this with either of the major military excursions undertaken under the previous guy, who didn't even bother adding the war expenses to the real budget.
@shepd: I think there needs to be more focus on the dental industry, it seems like there are as many scammy dentist as car mechanics and they are harder to spot.
How were you able to shop around? I find they get appalled when you bring up pricing before they actually do the work. I am really thinking of going to Mexico I know someone who lives near the border and he says the prices are like 20% of here and the quality is as good or better.
I think it is much better to owe medical bills directly given the way CC companies are treating us and the random interest rate hikes.
@neost:
I agree that costs are out the window. No normal person can fork over thousands of dollars for dentists and doctors these days.
That being said...you might want to introduce your daughter to Sonicare and dental floss.
@neost: I had that problem when a root canal failed. apparently root canals fail, but nobody tells you that. Although the specialist didn't up the price. The price stayed the same and I didn't apply for the healthcare finance loan til the work was finished.
Oh, I DID have dental benefits....but the annual cap on those was nowhere near enough to pay for a redone root canal.
@Saboth: "you might want to introduce your daughter to Sonicare and dental floss. "
Er. That was rude. Not everyone is lucky to have perfect teeth, even if they brush regularly and floss.
@NeverLetMeDown: I don't think the socialization will lower our costs, there are many reasons for this, but you have to admit it is possible that one reason for our high costs is the insurance and government system we have now. They were able to hide they high costs of everything by spreading it out and having someone else pay for it- socialization would just continue and expand the same process.
The REAL problem isn't who pays, it is how much it is. Saying we should get the rich to pay for it is just hiding the real problem and given the industry a blank check.
I guess I had one of the good ones, because I was told (a few times) "hey, this is probably going to work, but there's a risk that it doesn't." They also said that if it doesn't work right, they will fix it on their dime.
Too bad I can't remember the name of the place. Hopefully I won't need another root canal for awhile...
@PunditGuy: It is not, buy the CBO's own projections, and even many Dems are fighting the additional taxes that will slow down growth.
@frank64:
When I called I simply said I was on a limited budget and I was willing to pay cash. Any place that didn't seem interested at that point was off my list. That was about half of them right there. They were probably the ones that wouldn't answer the next question, anyway.
After that, I asked how much the checkup would be so I could bring in the appropriate amount.
In the end it came down to two places that were reasonable. I chose the one I did because the dentist was on vacation at the other place and I was getting really tired of my (now sharp-edged) tooth with the missing filling.
I think more people need to know that a lot of doctors will work out a payment plan with you if you can't pay it all at once.
I paid a large medical bill years ago with a cc because I was told I HAD to pay it RIGHT NOW or they'd send lawyers after me, etc. At the time, I was clueless and thought they could do the things they were threatening, so I gave them my credit card. Now, however, I know that it's unlikely they would have done any of those things (it wasn't a collection agency, so the laws about them not being able to lie about stuff like that doesn't apply, AFAIK) and that if I had brought up a payment plan they likely would have accepted. It's just that they weren't going to bring it up themselves.
Live and learn. (And tell others, so they can learn, too.)
@frank64: I don't know how anyone else does it, but I found my current (and awesome) dental practice through recommendations from other people. I did get lucky - the third dentist I tried after my original dentist retired was the one that I've since stayed with. But referals might be the way to go.
I use a Care Credit card for dental work. Zero percent interest for x number of months (depends on amount charged). You do have to be diligent and pay it in the allotted time or they will stick it to you with the interest. I haven't had a problem doing paying it in time. It allows me to have work done that I couldn't possibly pay for up front even with my dental insurance. As an added bonus, when my dog and cat both had cancer, I was able to use the card for the vet bill.
My wife and I have 4800 dollars in medical bills right now. Each bill is separate. We owe to the hospital, surgeon, anesthesiologist, pathologist, OB, and family doctor.
Each one of them is allowing us to make payments on the bills, although they'll only stretch them out for a year. So one particular bill forces us to cough up 250 dollars a month. The rest are significantly smaller but they really add up.
I don't know how true it is but a family friend told us that if we couldn't make the total scheduled monthly payment we could pay them a partial payment and they couldn't send us to collections since we made a good faith payment. It sounded as if they knew from experience.
@shepd: The longest I had to wait in a Canadian hospital, even for minor care, was I believe two and a half hours. When I went in for a major issue (chest pains), I was seeing a doctor within TWENTY minutes.
I think the budgetary constraints you speak of may be province mandated. I know in Ontario there was a brouhaha awhile back when the provincial government mandated hospitals had to have balanced budgets and if they couldn't balance, the government would send a bureaucrat in to somehow make it work.
It's nowhere near a perfect system, but it's also in my opinion, more effective and LESS COSTLY than the system in this country.
@INTPLibrarian: I once had that happen to me too, I had cut myself and didn't have insurance. They told me charge $30 as a deposit anything extra you pay when you leave. That sounded reasonable. Come to find out my finger(without stitches) cost $600! But they gave a 20% discount if I paid right then. So I put it on my card for the 20% discount and am still paying it.
If I didn't put it on my card I could have negioated the $600 down to at least the $250 they normally charge the insurance companies. They mark up the bill 200% if you don't have insurance and then give you a "discount". One big problem for the uninsured.
What a frightening situation to find oneself in. Talk about hanging on by the fingernails! I don't think I could stand to live like that, the "what-if's" just keep running through my head.
What if the next time you have a problem your CCs are maxed out, what if you run up your CC trying to pay off your medical but you still can't work to pay off the CC, what if enough people walk away without paying that hospitals won't even let you in without a credit check (or do they do that already?). What if the defaults in CC medical debt make the CC companies start refusing hospital bills entirely, or that because so many people are using them to "pay" for medical bills that the CC companies start asking for proof of medical insurance before issuing.
@shepd: What? You must not be aware of the different types of hospitals we have here - public and private. Public hospitals are funded by the government. They cannot turn away patients - not the poor and uninsured. Private hospitals are privately funded and make their own rules. Thus, they can turn away homeless and uninsured patients, as the government doesn't regulate them. So, the public hospitals are all now having budgetary problems because all of the homeless and uninsured are going to the public hospitals...thus, we citizens end up paying for their services after all, one way or another.
Also, you can walk into any hospital or dr. office here in the US any day of the week and have to wait for hours to get into see somebody. It doesn't happen only in "socialized healthcare" countries!
That's the shortest you'll have to wait for minor care in the bad hospitals.
"10% of the sickest patients... ...wait more than 12 hours"
"The provincial target is 6 hours or less"
Your 2.5 hours is lucky. 6 hours is supposed to be the standard (a pretty craptastic standard, IMHO).
No hospital should have to undergo this disgrace. But it's a regular occurrence in Canada. And it's been occurring in my area for decades. Why? Because socially funded hospitals don't work.
The best part about running all the hospitals under the same umbrella is when the entire provincial health care system goes on strike. That just doesn't happen in a private system. There's always someone who WANTS to pick up the slack. Too bad in Canada that's illegal.
@shepd:
I believe there is a lot of propaganda by insurance and medical companies concerning the care of canadians. I've known 2 people from there, and yeah, for certain things they had to wait, but they really didn't have a problem with the system.
That being said, I am sure the more tax money you can pump into a system, the better it is. The USA has a GDP 15x higher than Canada, so I expect our "universal" healthcare would be quite a bit better, more in-line with the European ones.
As-is, with medical costs going up yearly, it is only a matter of time before NO ONE can afford insurance. Between the 30% profit the insurance companies are making, and the costs to fend off inane legal fees, we are better served going to universal before we are paying 50% of our paycheck for insurance, and on the first claim, we are denied reimbursement.
I put my co-pays on the credit card but that's for the points.
Actually, I feel I'm getting a bonus, because up to a certain dollar amount, I pay the bill on my credit card and get cash back, and then my pre-tax FSA sends me a check. So I'm getting marginal extra cash both times on a necessary bill.
@solareclipse2: The hospital, etc., should have some kind of charitable write-off/write-down program. (My hospital actually sent me a form for it automatically. I was a little surprised.) If you're stretching that hard to make payments, you probably qualify.
I would see if they'll let you go longer than a year, at least on some of them; if you end up in collections, it'll go way longer than a year.
@INTPLibrarian: I don't know about the specifics about your situation, but my husband used to do collections for local hospitals (fortunately he's senior enough now that he doesn't have to do it anymore); they WILL send you to the lawyers for collections for nonpayment ... although it's not necessarily the worst thing in the world; they may be willing to take a smaller settlement or easier payment plan in collections than in the hospital billing department.
(Everywhere around here will send you a bill several times before going to collections, however; I'm not sure if they're demanding payment on the spot from your language or not.)
Here's my funny hospital collections story: Back when my husband was doing collections, I bobbled a hospital bill (I manage the bills and insurance) because of the confusing way our bills go, having to go to the insurer and then some are paid by our HCSA, some come to us and are reimbursed from the FSA, some are paid by our insurer, and some we just pay outright. We get as many as four statements for a single bill. Anyway, this particular bill was near the end of the year and we were having certain bills and payments readjusted because of problems submitting things through the HCSA. (We have kick-ass insurance and this level of bureaucracy alone makes me long for single-payer.) This bill was in that batch but for some reason it got lost in the shuffle and wasn't paid by the HCSA or FSA, but we never got the right statement back saying it hadn't been. (And I didn't think to check, although I'm not sure I know HOW to check.)
Next thing I know I get a notice from the hospital saying "YOUR BILL IS 180 DAYS PAST DUE AND IF YOU DO NOT PAY IN FIVE DAYS WE ARE SENDING YOU TO COLLECTIONS" ... dated 10 days prior, because I have the slowest mail on the planet.
I frantically called the number going "Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck" because "COLLECTIONS" was my husband and me showing up in court for collections HE WAS COLLECTING on a $120 bill to his client is EXACTLY THE KIND OF THING THAT WOULD SEND HIM THROUGH THE ROOF.
Luckily they are slow as molasses and had not yet sent it to collections so I was able to pay it and NOT have to go to court and explain to my husband how I managed to let a $120 bill end up in collections.
Health Insurance Bureaucracy: Breakin' up marriages since 1982!
@neost: around $4000 of my credit card debt is from the dentist. :( That's WITH insurance. Dental insurance is a joke.
For those of you who can, make the trip to Los Algodones Mexico for your dental needs. American equipment and sanitation standards. Algodones has for years been a place to go for medical & dental for people from the U.S. and Canada. Charges are often 10% to 25% of U.S. prices, which makes you wonder just how much of your U.S. charges go to your dentist's Mercedes and 2nd-home payments. I just got my teeth cleaned there for $25, less than my insurance's co-pay. A few of these places even take insurance. Algodones is located about 10 mi west of Yuma, AZ, on the CA/AZ/MX border. You need a passport, travel card or enhanced driver license these days.
@wrjohnston91283: Wow, here we are, drowning in medical debt, but the best you can come up with is "be grateful you had the opportunity to be ripped off." His point is that his dentist created a line of credit then found a way to milk every dime out of it. Like if you got a Macy's card and the cashier made sure you spent every last dime on things you didn't want or need. Americans have no way of knowing what charges and treatments are appropriate, and medical professionals clearly have a $$$ interest in the treatments & services they provide.
@neost: Last year's dental visits with the kids came with a hard sell for a GE dental credit card. I am now shopping for a new dentist.
The estimated bill for one family member's dental work was more than our car loan was for.
"me and the sysop" is right, dental insurance is a joke.
@frank64: I think the consolidation of the medical industrial complex will lower costs so long as MDs aren't allowed to write their own paychecks.
@frank64: We had one tell us they were in network for our insurance (they were not), lied about getting a pre-approval for some work. They were really pushing the work for one of the kids (preventative stuff) and using the "it was pre-approved" and is covered 100% as the selling point.
I found out later to the tune of $700.00 that they lied on both counts and never even called our insurance.
I am seriously considering the dental college in Omaha just so we don't get screwed again.
I can identify with this. All my medical bills are currently on my credit cards. I had medical insurance, but procedures are an 80/20 split, and what I needed was expensive for me. I couldn't work out payments because that place didn't do that. It seems like less and less are medical offices willing to work with you these days.
I got what I needed to save my life, but two years later I am still fighting to pay down my CC's because of it.
@I Love New Jersey: Yea what a silly notion, using money to actually give people medical care rather than letting a few pocket most of it as profits. What were we thinking.
Everyone knows profits are more important than people's lives and health!
@mrscoach: These loan and credit card programs are the exact same one offered for businesses in other industries. They give a huge finders fee % for the person originating the loan with no risk related to the repayment of it. The credit cards are the same way. Both are marketed heavily on the get rich quick aspect. So the business gets the money for the item or service AND a huge finders fee for sticking the patient or customer with a shitty high interest rate loan or card.
They need to outright ban this in medical care.
@floraposte: medical debt looks much better on your credit report than credit card debt. People understand medical debt and are more forgiving. It also is treated differently in bankruptcy.
The medical industry seems to be getting some PR relief by having people convert medical debt to credit card debt. It makes the ugly problem of medical debt harder to see.
how about the doctors and dentists pushing lines of credit to cover their insane charges? I had to take my 22 year old daughter to the dentist, she has no medical insurance. Root canal and crown? 1700. Then a couple of fillings 566...that then somehow doubled to 1100. Oh and that tooth extraction has to be done by an oral surgeon, there's another 700. Here fill out this credit app, oh you have a nice line of credit...let me see how i can figure out how to tap every last damn dime of it.
no joke. that's exactly what happened. i opened a line of credit to pay for my daughter's dental needs and they figured out how to charge me for every dime even thought he original costs I was given were about half of the credit line.