What happens if you can't pay medical bills? (USA)

[RedDeadReflection]

What happens, as a tourist, if you can't pay your medical bills?

I know as a resident depending on the state they can bankrupt you, seize assets, get priority during probate if you die, sometimes your spouse is responsible after that too.

But what happens if you aren't American? Assuming no (or poor) health insurance.

Reading about the woman who went to Florida without health insurance and has now been in hospital for five weeks. Repatriation not yet possible, and even if it was it's £130k. The gofundme has "only" raised £38k. If she recovers well enough to leave the hospital what happens? There must be a fairly robust procedure in place or nobody would get travel insurance if they could just walk out and fly home with no consequences. In this case the woman is a pensioner with few assets so I've no idea what they could do.

Getting there thanks. Luckily we didn't need to go to hospital, although we thought DH was going to at one point. I've never been so glad to get home!

There had been no changes to our policy from when we first took it out last summer so I'm hoping we'll be ok. My only worry is they won't pay for me as I had a 'respiratory virus' earlier this year and because I didn't have a diagnosis it was an undiagnosed condition. Unfortunately I had bronchitis in the US so we'll have to wait and see.

I was very surprised when I called the insurer to double check something (before we travelled) to be told they didn't need to know about any changes until the policy renewal next year. I actually rang back to speak to someone else to make sure!

Same. I was surprised some people hadn’t.

How absolutely patronising. I have a more than reasonable education thanks considering I was a qualified nurse but I had never heard of him. And I’m 48. It also has not affected my daily life one bit by being ignorant of this fact.

I'll take that as you've no decent response. Enjoy your night!

Happened to someone I knew.

Went to the USA, had insurance but it was insufficient and once it maxed out they transferred her to a lower grade facility. She recovered enough to return home to the UK, where they pursued her relentlessly through international debt collection agencies. She sought legal advice and was basically told they'd just chase and chase until the debt was paid, they'd add interest and get a CCj type equivalent etc.

She eventually worked out a payment plan with them but it would take years to pay off.

I know in America they can pursue your relatives for debt, I'm not sure how that comes across the pond.

Take it as meant; I cannot be bothered with your truculence, it's tedious.

Not a chance in hell would I risk it, you uh will be hounded.

Especially the USA, my DH and oldest is there and the travel insurance was a lot more than the last time we went, a few years now, but 100% worth it. We have never traveled without insurance to any country.

I'm 49 and up until September managed to hold down a good job and I've never heard of him.

Im sure a lot of posters are getting more and more snobbish and patronising 🙄

Really, give it up.

No one knows everything, but don’t attack someone who mentions something you are ignorant of. And which is in fact pretty common knowledge.

And throwing around your supposed qualifications is beyond embarrassing. 😳

Then maybe if you didn't have anything constructive to say you should have initially considered keeping your lips zipped. My truculence and I will be just fine, it seems to annoy holier than thou types apparently 😉

Someone has funded her to the sum of £38k which is huge. Dont know the story but what was the women thinking travelling without insurance

I’m a Brit living in the US. I did this years ago when I was still a student and just visiting, not living here. I broke my leg while hiking and didn’t have insurance because I was only there for a few weeks and stupidly decided I didn’t need it. Whenever you get treated in the US, they tell you that if you can’t pay you should take your bill to the billing department. I did this, filled out the form they wanted, and provided the documents that they asked for.

The day before I headed back to London I received a new bill with a $0 balance and a letter saying that my fees had been waived because it was deemed that I could not pay. The woman that helped me said that the government would reimburse the hospital for a portion of my care and that they do this for everyone that qualifies using a scale based on income and household. Since I was a student, I automatically qualified to have 100% written off. If you actually go to the hospital like they tell you to, they can do quite a bit to work with you.

Supposed? Because it's hard to believe someone might have qualifications without knowing this crap? Or when posters mention that anyone with a reasonable education should know something must we all pretend we're thickos instead?

I didn't attack anyone, the first sign of any hostility was when I was questioned on not knowing who he was as if it's so unbelievable that someone wouldn't. Can you imagine being so smarmy as to try and call someone out on the internet for not having heard of some ancient Economist before?

If you've nothing actually useful to add to my initial post then you're welcome to keep commenting, it's an open forum, but continuous derailment says more about you than it does me.

The private repatriation flight is £160k before even touching the actual medical bills, so no idea what happens with the gofundme if it doesn't get enough to even cover the flight home.

Not what I said though is it?

Just found the Go Fund Me page. The woman is nearly 80 and it states her insurance policy was going to be £3k so she decided not buy it!! At £3k she would have had some serious health conditions. How could people be so deluded?

£3k seems like a bargain now!
It was a 3 week trip, I can't imagine risking it because of money. If it was such an issue why not reduce the trip to two weeks to find the insurance money? Apparently she'd been 30 or so times to Florida, I'd be interested to know if she actually had insurance the other times or was pushing her luck.

I agree. And i never studied economics at school or at university. But the phrase Keynesian economics was and is very familiar.

This is interesting, very different to some of the US medical shows (The Resident was a recent one I'd seen) where the bosses feed down to the line to the ER doctors that someone is uninsured and to fix them up and ship them out asap.

I'm American. In all likelihood once they find out she lives in another country they will do nothing. Too hard to chase her for it.

Especially as there's no agreement with the UK for debt collection according to a pp. Most surprising thing I've learnt today considering we have reciprocal arrangements for many other things.

Me either. 34 and never heard of him. It's possible they teach his theory without actually mentioning him by name. I mean, we're taught to read a map but do we know the names of the people who charted it?

You're the one who needs to give it up.

So incredibly patronising.

"Artistic license" most likely. A boss saying "Sucks he can't pay, but just discharge him anyway" isn't very exciting.

It's a very thin portrayal of the 'stabilize' part of the law. You can stabilize a patient and move them to another facility as long as it does not endanger them. Some insurance companies contract with specific hospitals, so if you go to a 'non-contract' hospital's ER they can stabilize you and send you to your 'contract' hospital for further treatment. So for my broken ankle if my insurance hadn't been 'good' where I ended up the ER could have stabilized my ankle and then had me sent to my participating hospital by 'safe and appropriate transport' (ambulance in my case) for surgery and recuperation. This situation usually arises when someone has an HMO policy or if they're a Medicaid patient. But the main thing is that NO hospital can 'ship out' a patient if they are in critical/life threatening condition or in labour with not enough time to get to 'their' hospital.

Are we even taught to read a map? 😂 I can't honestly remember learning how to at school but I was in the cadets so learnt then, same with first aid and the like. Briefly covered the components of a map on geography but not how to actually use one.