I recently received a medical bill from a hospitalization that occurred 2 years ago. I was the victim of a mugging/attack and had to get admitted to a hospital for X-Rays and whatnot. I was also......pretty inebriated at the time so my memory of incident is very hazy. At the time I was on my parents insurance and was not really involved in monitoring the statements(I basically just paid my Co-Pay when ever I needed to use it) so I assumed that the matter was covered by insurance since my parents never brought it up. They were the ones that picked me up and provided the Insurance info since I had no wallet(mugging). Fast forward to now, where I am no longer on their insurance and I receive a bill for $5000 that appears to have never been sent to the insurance company. I am completely frozen and don't know how to proceed.
My initial instinct is for me(or my parents) to call the hospital/medical company to get more info and then call the previous insurance company to see if they will still cover the cost of the visit even though it happened so long ago. Is that a good plan? I don't know what legal rights I have in this matter so I would like to proceed very carefully so as to not accidentally admit/do something that would cost me that amount. Paying anywhere near that amount would devastate me financially.
Is it even legal for a hospital to do this? 2 years is a long time to wait to send a bill, how can they expect that situations like mine wouldn't happen?
Submitted May 10, 2018 at 12:12PM by BeachDrone https://ift.tt/2Iaz1g3
