The doctor didn't charge the health insurance in time, am I liable?
This has a straightforward answer. It's likely that your doctor and the hospital have no responsibility to ensure that your insurance claim is filed in a timely manner. They bill you whether you or they get reimbursed by insurance, or not. The insurance company is more than happy not to pay you any way they can. Sorry if this is harsh, but it's up to you to follow through. See also here. "I work for a health billing company. It is completely the provider's responsibility to bill your health insurance in a timely manner if they have your health insurance information on file (it sounds like they did). If you can gather a copy of your EOB (Explanation of Benefits) from your health insurance, it will likely say something to the extent of: ""claim was submitted after the timely filing limit, therefore no payment was made. The patient is not liable for the remaining balance."" Don't let the hospital/physician bully you into paying for something they should have submitted to the insurance in the first place." I was in a similar situation years back and I refused to pay the bill. My point of view was that I provided the hospital with all information needed to submit the claim in a timely matter and that I should not be held responsible for their failure to do so. In the end they waived the charges. So while technically I might have been responsible for paying the charges, in reality I think they decided it wasn't worth the hassle of making me (I would have fought it all the way up to the top). Not sure that I would recommend this approach though :) The hospital likely has a contract with your insurance company which makes them obligated to bill the insurance before billing you! I had a similar occurrence that was thrown out when my insurance company provided a copy of a contract with the hospital to the judge. So if there is an agreement they must file with the insurance in timely manner. That is your bill because the services were performed for you.   You still can negotiate with the doctor however.  Suggest that while you aren't willing to pay the full share, you will pay the negotiated amount he would have actually gotten from the insurance company (or some fraction thereof).  Doc did make a mistake, but you are very much liable for it. "I had a similar issue take place at a hospital when the repeatedly billed the ""wrong me"" -- a stale insurance record left behind from when I was a dependent on my parent's insurance a decade earlier. They ended up billing me for anesthesia when I had a major surgery (everything else was billed to the correct insurance.) The outsourced billing people were pretty unhelpful (not usually the case with hospitals), so I became the squeaky wheel. I sent certified letters, had my priest rattle the cage (it was a Catholic hospital) and eventually talked myself into a meeting with the VP of Finance, who started paying attention when the incompetence of his folks became apparent. Total cost: $0 + my time." "Here's my thought - call the insurance company back. Ask them to just tell you what the ""reasonable and customary"" approved payment would be. Offer that exact amount to the hospital, it's what they would have gotten anyway, and you learned a cheap lesson." If you read all that paperwork they made you fill out at the emergency room, there is probably something in there explicitly stating that you owe any bills you rack up regardless of what happens with the insurance company. They generally have a disclaimer that filing for you with your insurance company is a courtesy service they offer, but they are not obliged to do it.  Ultimately, you are responsible for your bills even if the provider slow-billed you.  Sorry.
Personal story here: I ended up at the Santa Monica hospital without insurance and left with a bill of $30k-$35k. They really helped me, so I felt like I had a duty to pay them. However, close inspection revealed ridiculous markups on some items which I would have disputed, but I noticed that I had been billed for a few thousands of services not rendered. I got very mad at them for this, they apologized, told me they'd fix it. I never heard back from them and they never put it in collection either. I'm assuming they (rightfully) got scared that I'd go to court and this would be bad publicity. Sometimes I feel guilty I didn't pay them anything, sometimes I feel like they tried to screw me. "Just as with any other service provider - vote with your wallet. Do not go back to that doctor's office, and make sure they know why. It's unheard of that a service provider will not disclose the anticipated charges ahead of time. A service provider saying ""we won't tell you how much we charge"" is a huge red flag, and you shouldn't have been dealing with them to begin with. Now you know. how can we ever get health care costs under control if there's so   little transparency? I'm assuming you're in the US. This is not going to change, since there's no profit in not screwing the customers. As long as health-care is a for-profit industry, you should expect everyone in it being busy figuring out a way for money to move from your wallet to their. That's what capitalism is about." I've considered just calling the out-of-network hospital and asking   them to reduce the charges. Ideally they would send my health   insurance provider a smaller bill which I could just pay. However I   want to be careful about how I proceed. Yes, that's what you should be doing. They might give you a discount, but even if not - they will definitely be willing to work out a payment plan for you so that you could pay in installments and not in a lump sum. I have experience with the El Camino group in California, that did just that. It was several hundreds, so they didn't give a discount, but were able to work out an installment plan for several months without much hassle. That is something to do before you get to lawyers. I'm not sure I know how the lawyer could be useful to you, other than claiming bankruptcy or waiting for them to turn to collections and then fight those. You should also work with your insurance. How much is your deductible? If your deductible is so high that it exceeds the several thousands bill you got - do you have a HSA? FSA? These will allow you paying the bill with pre-tax money, saving quite a lot (depending on your brackets and how much you put there). I would expect the insurance to bill you for the deductible, and cover all the rest. Is it not what is happening? Due to the fact that months have gone by since the item was shipped to you it will be hard to resolve by sending it back.  The collection agency is now only interested in getting as much of the money as they can from you. They may have sent a percentage of the debt to the original company when they bought the debt. They may also be working on a commission. Therefore they are not interested in having everybody happy with the result. They need to follow the law, but they don't care if you are a happy customer.  The longer you wait to resolve it, the longer it will remain on the credit report. The fact that it went to collections has already hurt your score.  Yes, make sure that they update your credit file to reflect that you have paid the debt. Get it in writing. Also check with your health insurance company to see if this is at least partially covered by insurance. They generally won't cover the $12 in fees from the collections company, but they might cover part of the original bill. Depending on the item, it might also be an allowable expense for your FSA (Flexible spending account) or your HSA (Health Spending account). Unfortunately I've seen every single example you've provided from the health care providers perspective.  Trust me, they aren't happy about the situation either - hence the reason they will demand up front payment from you based on who your insurance carrier is.  I could name a few of the top brand name insurance companies in this country that do all of this to their clients.   Medical billing is an incredibly over complicated beast.  One that insurance companies have been doing everything they can to make worse over the years.  The codes can change annually and there are MANY different codes which can cover the exact same situation.  Sure the insurance company might cover gallstones, but if you happen to be pregnant, well, that may not covered even though the treatment is the exact same. What can you do? Consider locating a new insurance company.  You do have options and don't have to go with the one your company uses.  The downside is that this is going to take quite a bit of research on your part and it will end up costing you more money on your monthly premiums simply because your company won't be footing part of the bill.   Talk to other co-workers and see if their experiences match yours.  If so, try to get a large enough group together to approach management and demand resolution.   A third potential avenue is to get politically involved - but I'm enough of a pessimist that I doubt that would do any good.  From what I've seen, neither major political party's current position actually does anything to solve the problem. A fourth option is suing the insurance company - but that is going to be incredibly expensive and take forever.  You might have better luck getting together with a bunch of local people and demand your attorney general review the billing/payment practices. Again, this is going to require a LOT of effort. A fifth option is to attempt to cash pay your bills and submit them yourself to the insurance company for reimbursement.  If you do this you can likely negotiate lower bills with the medical provider.  For anything less than about $2,000 I negotiate the amount prior to service.  Believe me when I say that providers are more than happy to give decent discounts if they know they won't have to deal with the insurance companies themselves.  Slightly more work for you, but could be far cheaper in the long run. First of all, the company will pay the money for the insurance, do not be afraid. They have to pay IF 1) the insurance premium was paid every month and 2) there was not a false declaration of health when the contract was signed 5 or 10 years ago. It normally takes between 1 month and 4 months to settle an insurance contract. Your case might take a little longer. Second, the insurance company admit that you are the beneficiary, so the money will eventually come to you. What they say is that you need someone in charge, a trustee or a curatorship to handle the money in your name. Why? Because you have a mental health team in charge of you. Be patient, and... Third, start by talking to someone in charge in your mental health team or the people you see. What you need is someone acting as a trustee for you. You need to go and seek free legal aid. Depending on your country or state of residence.  I cannot help you more than that. You will have the money, eventually in a few months, but you need to find a trustee, a guardian as soon as possible. Someone in your family could easily do it for you ? "Is it common in the US not to pay medical bills? Or do I misunderstood what had been said? I would feel comfortable saying that most people who face medical bills don't pay them.  They are unable.  If they were able, they would have gotten medical insurance.  In America, something like 55% of individuals do not have even $500 of savings, so when a big medical bill rolls in especially on top of lost work hours, they don't have a lot of options.  Hospitals charge reasonable prices to insurance companies and Medicare. These fees are negotiated in advance and reflect the hospital's actual costs.  This is called ""usual, reasonable and customary"".  Hospitals charge a wildly inflated, criminally outrageous ""cash price"" to the uninsured. For instance back when Medicare paid about $175 for an ambulance ride, a friend was billed $1100 for the exact same thing.   The hospital aims to scare the living daylights out of the patient (caring nothing about what that does to their health!) Perfect world, the patient pays them the $1100 instead of paying their rent.  If the patient puts up a fight, they hope to haggle them down to something like $400, remember it really costs $175. This tactic is a huge profit-center for hospitals, even the ""charity"" hospitals, and they feel justified because so many uninsured don't pay at all (the hospital considers them ""deadbeats"".) Well, patients don't pay because cash prices are unreachable, so they just give up. Anyway, your friends are correct, don't even think of paying those cash billing amounts. Research and find out what Medicare pays, offer 60% of that, and haggle it to 100%.  And sleep well knowing you paid what is fair. Not all services are as overpriced as my example, but most are at least 50% too high.  The hospital does send you all the bills as a formality, even while they submit them to your insurance company. And then the insurance company usually pays them, so it is correct to ""not pay that bill"". A lot of medical offices will check with your insurance company even before you leave the office, and ask you to immediately pay anything the insurance won't cover.  For instance they often have ""co-pays"" where you pay $20 and they pay the rest. To be clear: if your insurance company negotiates a rate with the hospital, say $185 for the ambulance ride, that is your price, which you are entitled to as a member of that insurance system. A lot of people get their livelihood from the inefficiency in medical insurance and billing.  Their political power is why it's so hard for America to install a simpler system (or even replace Obamacare in an ideal political environment).  It is also a big part of why America spends 18% of GDP on healthcare instead of 7-11% like our European peers who do not have to account for every gauze or rebill multiple insurers.  Sorting out ""who pays"" would be expensive even if everyone did pay." Do you have a clue of what would of happened to you if you had some serious condition and at some point you lost your job? Insurers would deny you insurance because of pre-existing conditions, and you would be left out to dry.   Now maybe you aren't as unfortunate as having a serious health condition, but no new bill will make everything better for everyone. Here's your problem: The debt is valid and it is your debt, regardless of your arrangement with the insurance company. The insurance company (possibly) owes you money, and you owe the Doctor money. You are stuck in the middle, and in the end it doesn't matter whether the insurance company pays as to whether you owe the money. Don't ignore them. Also, disputing the debt it pointless because the truth is that you do owe the debt. The insurance company may owe you money (which is in dispute), but the debt to your medical provider is your own. You are just stuck in the middle. It sucks, but is pretty common. I think the best you can do is keep working on the insurance company and responding to the bill collectors letting them know that you are working on it and will need to pay late. In theory they deal with this a lot and probably understand, not that it will make them lay off you in the meantime.  In the end it is possible you might have to sue the insurance company to get the money. One thing to be careful about: If the debt is fairly old (several years) you may want to avoid making partial payments because if this goes on your credit report, that payment may extend the period where the negative information can appear on your credit history. I bought Health Insurance for myself after a period without it, and my premiums were not terrible. I was a 27 year old man, living in California, no preexisting conditions, and I paid approximately 90$ a month. This was for a standard Health Insurance plan.  However, when I moved back to NY a little while later, insurance companies wanted almost $500/month for catastrophic coverage.  So, from personal experience, my answer is that price varies widely by state. Different states have different regulations as to what Health Insurance Companies need to cover and at what price. In NY, Health Insurance companies can't charge different rates according to age. Also, in NY, there is a price spiral, where the price is so high, few people buy it, so they have to raise the price because not enough well people are in the pool, so fewer people buy it.... To test it out, go to an online insurance broker, like ehealthinsurace, and put in your proposed information, including that you haven't been covered for a period. This way you will know. "At fault doesn't mean negligent... If a driver were doing 150 on the wrong side of the street and gets in an accident, no insurer is paying that out.  Likewise a credit agency not properly handling sensitive info and not giving proper disclosures of a breach won't lead to an insurance policy giving them a dime.  I'd say google ""does insurance cover negligence,"" but you should probably Google the definition of negligence first.  What your saying and the links you've provided clearly shows you don't even know what that word means." Insurance is not health care.  Insurance is a financial instrument designed to protect the insured from short term shocks caused by some calamity by spreading out the cost over time.    Not covering someone with a pre-existing condition is similar to an car-insurance company refusing to pay for repairing a damaged car, where the damage was caused prior to obtaining insurance.  Not to be rude but failure to understand that utterly simple basic financial concept is exactly the sort of willful ignorance I'm talking about.  What you are interested in is 'justice'.  Someone was harmed by a desease which is tragic for the individual, and in some sense 'cosmically unfair'.   It isn't however the fault of the insurance company that the person didn't purchase a policy beforehand.  It would in fact be unfair to existing policy holders if the insurance company pays such claims, as it would raise their rates to cover those who will now rationally choose not to get insurance until after they have a claim. No. You have been purchasing protection from unexpected emergencies. You got the protection you paid for. That money has been spent. Some insurance plans do pay you something at the end. They do this by charging you additional money, and investing it. At the end, you get some of the profit n that investment, after the company has taken payments for managing this account. You can do better by setting up your own investments, separate from the insurance. I'm going to echo Phil and say that you should add more information. That being said, I think it is possible for you to owe the government that much. If you received a federal health insurance subsidy and live in a state that didn't expand medicaid, you could have received a subsidy through out the year that you did not end up qualifying for. It appears you are outside the medicaid limit of 133% of the poverty level($11,670) or $15,521. If you received a subsidy of $275 a month from the marketplace, you would have received $3300 worth of aid from the government that you don't qualify for. Now they are expecting you to pay it back. Patience is the key to success. If you hold strong without falling to temptations like seeing a small surge in the price. If it goes down it comes up after a period of time. Just invest on the share when it reaches low bottom and you could see you money multiplying year after year