Georgia has excellent hospitals that offer the best medical care available. However, these services can be very expensive. Hospital services that come with high price tags aren’t specific to Georgia either. Across the U.S., thousands of consumers are struggling with medical bills. In fact, medical debt is the number one issue in the country that leads consumers to bankruptcy filings. Georgia consumers who receive hospital care are probably familiar with the sticker shock that typically comes with medical bills. You may think that there’s no way an ambulance ride or simple procedure can cost so much, but, most of the time, the pricing is accurate. Sometimes, however, hospital charge patients incorrectly. If this ever happens to you, it’s important to know how to deal with the oversights, ideally before the bill goes to medical collections.
What Georgia Residents should do if They are Overcharged by a Medical Care Provider and End Up with Medical Debt Collections
Recently, a popular website that features information about credit received a question from a consumer. This consumer was from New York, but his experience is similar to what plenty of Georgia consumers have gone through. He wrote in to ask if $2,691.50 for a two-mile ambulance ride seemed right. After some investigation, the website confirmed that, yes, the charge was correct. However, medical bill mistakes are not at all uncommon. Because of this, Georgia consumers should never hesitate to dispute any item on a hospital bill that seems like it might be an error.
If a hospital overcharges you for a procedure or bills you for a medical service that you didn’t receive, you should contact the provider first. Ask for an affordable payment plan so that the bill stays out of medical collections during your dispute investigation. This will prevent medical collections from showing up on your credit reports and harming your credit score. Of course, in some of the newer credit scoring models medical-bill collections won’t count against you. You have to remember, though, that not all lenders are currently using these new scoring models.
Disputing Medical Billing Errors on Credit Reports
You should be aware of the fact that disputing items on a medical bill may require some work and a good deal of patience. It can get even more complicated for Georgia consumers if disputed bills go unpaid and end up in medical collections. At this point, you’ll most likely have to deal with debt collectors and, quite possibly, a damaged credit score.
Luckily, if you have medical collections debt that you don’t actually owe or that has been reported in error to the credit bureaus, you can get a FREE credit repair lawyer to help you resolve these issues. At Credit Repair Lawyers of America, we can assist Georgia residents with any type of inaccuracy that you find on any of your credit reports. We can also put a stop to harassing phone calls from abusive debt collectors.
The Free and Legal way to Get Better Credit
Don’t let medical debt collections and other errors on your credit reports bring your credit score down. At Credit Repair Lawyers of America, we’ve been cleaning up credit reports for consumers since 2008 for free. How do we do it? All of our fees come from the defendants in settled cases. This is why our clients pay nothing for the work we do.
Let’s start the conversation about what we can do for your credit. Set up your free consultation today by calling Attorney Gary Nitzkin at (404)591-6680 or sending him a message through our contact page.
