medical bill during chapter 13

[itlm062]

wife had surgery in january 2013, there were several bills...hospital, doctor, anesthesiologist etc...
the anesthesiologist was not "in network" with her insurence, but everything else was.

so they sent us a bill say for 1000, insurance paid them 400, and we paid 200+, 7 months later, they want the balance.

in little over a month, this debt has gone to a collection agency while we are still trying to work with AETNA to re-process the claim.

question is, would this effect our BK case and could it hurt the credit more?

(the rep on the phone said to her in a raised voice "your credit score will suffer")

thanks

[LadyInTheRed]

Because it is a post-petition debt, the creditor can report it on your credit report which will hurt your credit. How much your score will be damaged compared to the damage the BK has caused partly depends on how much time there is between the delinquency and your dischage. If you still have more than 2 years left in your plan, my guess is that the effect will not be signficant by the time you finish your BK.

The debt also shouldn't affect your BK unless you can't pay it and want to petition the court for a plan modification (may be an option if the $600 not covered by insurance exceeded your budgeted medical expenses). For the amount you are talking about, it's probably better to figure out how to get it paid.

[Pandora]

Is there a reason why Aetna would reprocess the claim given you were out of network?

Worse case scenario is you go to court if the CA wont work with you with what you can afford to pay (and in 98% of the cases they probably wont) so then you let the judge decide based on what you proposed to pay monthly. You can always ask the Original creditor to take the debt back and set up payments with them vs. the CA, but..its not a guarentee.

As LITR stated, if it becomes a hardship for you re: monthly payment, you could ask for a plan modification to allow more for medical payment. It usually costs to modify your plan...for us, I believe our lawyer said if we ever had to do so, it would be around $30 per modification request, but as always, YMMV.

I've had to set up payments with medical imaging for my deductible for MRI scans, and they were willing to take what I could afford to pay ($25-50 month) w/out filling out any financial paperwork. If I could afford more, I paid more, but generally they were really nice about working with us. As always however, if anyone told me they would not accept what I could afford to pay (a reasonable amount of course..) then I would always get their name, etc and tell them please provide in writing their refusal to accept my payment; this way if they ever did take me to court / collections - I would have that for the judge. I've only had to do that twice in my life thus far and it was over 20 years ago; both times..the judge threw out my case based on refusal to accept my payment and made the CA eat the debt Was a nice feeling actually because that particular JDB wasn't very nice and made my life a living hell.

[itlm062]

I am not sure what AETNA would do, but that's what they told us...(to send in all paper work for them to re-process).

we still got 3 more years to go on our plan, so not too worried about credit score etc...

our atty got back and volunteered to talk to CA sort of scare them off into a settlement etc...

thanks all for your help!