Anyone ever heard of Community/Charity Care, it covers unpaid medical bills.

[Anonymous]

Hey everyone, something strange happened, last year, around 12/2013, all 3 of my credit reports had no sign of a medical collection ER bill (for $419) that had been reporting as unpaid since mid 2010. I was confused, so I called the OC (the hospital) and asked if they had the debt, they said they did. I asked them about the ER bill and they it was covered by something called Community/Charity Care which covers people's unpaid medical expenses if they do not have adequate health insurance coverage at the time. According to the hospital records, Community/Charity Care had covered the bill around late 2010. But I was wondering, if this place covered the bill in 2010, why did the collection company not remove the account from all 3 credit bureaus until 3 years later (around 12/2013)? Was it because the OC finally got around to telling them that the bill was paid?

And has anyone heard of Community/Charity Care organization? I heard that hospitals have started offering it since recent times. 

[savings4tomorrow]

Yes, this is actually very common. It was probably not covered with Charoty till way after it was report.   Most, if not all hospitals have these programs. Every hospital refers to them by a different name, but they are a form of a Charity program. There are some facilities that are more tightly lipped about their programs than others… Normally it’s for uninsured/underinsured who cannot afford health ins and do not qualify for state Medicaid programs. What sometimes happens is at the end of their fiscal year hospital have too much money left over and they write peoples bills off to reduce it…they don’t want to seem like they are not using the funds. Most hospital have an application process…I work at a state hospital and it taked FOREVER for them to process anything.  

[Anonymous]

Oh I see, so once the Charity program (offered by hospitals) covers the unpaid medical bill (which is in collections), the collection account is usually removed from the credit reports? Has this been anyone's experience as well?

[rbon]

At the hospital I work at, if you are uninsured and have below a certain credit rating, they will write it off within the first week. If your credit rating is higher and you are uninsured, you must apply for charity care. This will either pay a percentage or all of your bill. Our hospital also accepts payments and they have a new no interest loan program to cover bills. If someone has a bill in collection, but comes in to PIF, they will remove from the CA and credit report. If they pay to CA, they will have to request to have it removed.

I had bills at another hospital about 60 miles away and even though we paid monthly, they wanted 3x as much. They turned it over to collections even though we were paying monthly. When we pd off the bill, the agency and hospital refused to remove from our credit reports.


So as you can see, places differ. Most charity care require that you apply though.

[dashpt]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Hey everyone, something strange happened, last year, around 12/2013, all 3 of my credit reports had no sign of a medical collection ER bill (for $419) that had been reporting as unpaid since mid 2010. I was confused, so I called the OC (the hospital) and asked if they had the debt, they said they did. I asked them about the ER bill and they it was covered by something called Community/Charity Care which covers people's unpaid medical expenses if they do not have adequate health insurance coverage at the time. According to the hospital records, Community/Charity Care had covered the bill around late 2010. But I was wondering, if this place covered the bill in 2010, why did the collection company not remove the account from all 3 credit bureaus until 3 years later (around 12/2013)? Was it because the OC finally got around to telling them that the bill was paid?

And has anyone heard of Community/Charity Care organization? I heard that hospitals have started offering it since recent times. 

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Yes, that is the way it seems to work.....same thing happened to me after i gave birth to my daughter and had no insurance over 20+ thousand in hospital bills, since the delivery has complications and the stay was longer for us both.....all the bills went to collections, physicians, anesthesiologist etc....about 3.5 years later they disappeared, I called to check what happened and was toll the charity program paid my bills....