most of the last 6 months, medical costs have messed up my budget

Medical bills has a way of doing that to your budget in a hurry. One of the hospitals that we owed over $6,000 to sent us a letter that if we would pay half that they would consider it paid in full. So my husband took out a loan from his 401K and we received the check today. WE still owe 4 more hospitals but at least this one will be paid off. Often if you contact the hospital, they will let you pay half of it. They will also set up a payment plan that is in your budget so you can just make monthly payments.

The only way I know how is to get a loan, and pay it off like that. Or go to the hospitals/doctors and offer a cash settlement. I have been there more times than I care to think about it. Good luck sugar.

I find this so hard to comprehend as in the UK we pay National Insurance, a percentage of our wage, and this covers us for any form of medical help apart from dentistry. If people are on Social, they get everything free, including dentistry, so to read you need to budget because of medical costs just sounds weird. What I have done in the past is made a budget plan and scruntinised all my outgoings and made sacrifices over things I can do without. I usually never see my money, as I use cards instead, so I started drawing out a certain amount a week and would only live on that. I found this dramatically reduced my outgoings as I could see what I was spending my money on. Its so easy to waste so much, over things we do not need. Good luck in paying off your bill.

Maybe try and pay off one bill at a time while sending minimum payments to the others that are due. As you eliminate a few, you can add what you would have been paying to pay off some others. At least you might feel better about paying them off if you can actually pay them off one at a time. I hope you understood what I said.

I hear you on that, we are in teh same situation. We contacted our hospital's billing department and they allowed us to spread the payments out over time. That helped immensely. I have also heard that as long as you mail them something each month, say ten dollars, that they can't do anything to you for non-payment. Of course, if they add interest then that wouldn't be a wise plan. Unless the medcial bills have assoicated interst, I would pay just a tad to each one per month and not short myself on other items.

I just read an article recently about hospital bills, but I can't recall the specifics. I do remember reading in that article that if the billing department can't or won't help you, it might be because the hospital has another department set up for helping patients set up payment plans, usually this department is called Patient Services or something similar. Also, I believe hopsitals are notorious for billing errors, so it is always wise to check the charges line by line. Sorry, i couldn't remember more from the article.