My parents live alone and each has dementia to some degree. Bills arrive at their house and are discarded or misplaced. (A big box marked BILLS in a prominent place was helpful for a while, but that was full of advertisements on my last visit. Advertisements and one letter from a collection agency.)
Apparently, my brother and I missed a medical bill of theirs and it is now in collections for $1800. The parents went through a phase last year of taking fairly frequent ambulance rides before we got part-time hired caregivers and hospice in place, and these charges seem to be related to one of those trips to the ER. I know that dealing directly with the provider can often see these owed amounts reduced; often some of the amount was billed incorrectly and should have been paid by insurance or Medicare. Also, doctors and hospitals are often receptive to payments over time.
So it is frustrating to now have to deal with collections about this debt. I have no experience in dealing with debt collectors.
I do not want harrassing calls coming to my parents' house. I know that my mother could likely be convinced to just mail in a check or to even provide that information over the phone.
Paying a caregiver $10/hr has taken up almost all of my parents' discretionary income. We could come up with all of the money right away by selling some assets, but we'd rather not do that. My parents could afford to pay $50-$100 a month toward the debt.
Please provide any information to help me sort this out. I've looked around Clark Howard's site and this subreddit. I plan to request a verification letter and send a drop dead letter.
Is there any way to see if these charges from last year should have been paid by insurance and Medicare now that they are in collections?
The Drop Dead Letter thing seems too good to be true. Can one letter really stop them from contacting us?
Is it advisable to try to set up payment plan with the collectors?
Although having letters and such go to my parents' house is problematic for the reasons outlines above, I don't want the collector's knowing any of my or my brother's contact information. Would it make sense to set up a PO Box just for these purposes?
Thanks for any information and help.
Submitted February 25, 2017 at 09:11AM by bradmajors69 http://ift.tt/2mw1wJN
