Trauma care is some of the most expensive medical support you may ever require. The cost to provide emergency services and surgery to repair damage caused by a crash can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars, if not six figures.
Especially if you don’t have very good health insurance or any coverage at all, you may experience sticker shock when you see the invoice for your hospital care. You may wonder if it is possible to negotiate how much you have to pay for the care you already received.
Do hospitals ever adjust what they charge their patients?
Yes, hospitals are receptive to negotiation efforts
Hospitals frequently have the ability to work with the people that receive care at their facilities. Many hospitals have special funds that they can apply to outstanding bills from people without insurance or with bad insurance.
Others may cooperate in reducing the total amount owed if you agree to specific payment arrangements. You may even be able to reduce the total invoice by going over the bill in detail and looking for mistakes. Such an approach may take a lot of time and effort and will still ultimately leave you with the responsibility to make monthly payments until you have fully repaid the cost of the medical care you received following the car crash.
Using car insurance may be a better option
When you are not the one to blame for a motor vehicle collision, you have the option of filing a claim against the other driver’s bodily injury liability coverage. However, some drivers don’t have very much liability coverage because the state requirements are easily a tenth of what certain catastrophic injuries might cost.
If you get hurt in a crash and the driver to blame for the wreck doesn’t have good insurance, you may want to explore is personal injury claim. You can take a driver who is negligent or who broke the law at the time of a crash to court and potentially secure compensation for your hospital bills and vehicle damage expenses.