Please Help With Medical CA - CMRE Financial Services

[Anonymous]

I've followed this board for quite some time now, but this is the first time I've been in a credit situation where I need some direct advice. 

Long story short, we gave birth to our son 3 months ago and then had to go back to the emergency room 1 week later.  Fortunately all is well at this point, but we've got myriad bills to deal with.  My wife's OB still has yet to file their claim for prenatal-delivery correctly to our insurance so we're still waiting on that, although they made us prepay over $2000 to cover our insurance deductible before the birth.  In the meantime, most other bills rolled in and used up our deductible, so the OB is basically holding our money hostage until insurance pays them.  Problem is, we need that money back to pay the bills that did go towards deductible.

This brings me to my issue: we had an outstanding prenatal bill for an ultrasound analysis, but were just waiting on all these bills to shake out with insurance before making payments.  Had no idea the medical diagnostic group would turn it over to collections so quickly.  We just got the letter from CMRE Financial Services a few days ago, and have several more weeks to file a dispute.  This seems like a legit bill (only $110), so I've really got nothing to dispute about it.  My main concern is damage to my wife's (and very possibly my) credit rating.  We have near perfect credit now, and I will do almost anything at this point to keep it off our credit reports (ran reports today and didn't see anything).

What's my best course of action at this point to keep our credit scores from being ruined?  Call the original debtor and ask them to recall from CMRE with a guarantee that it will not go on credit?  Get in touch with CMRE and try to get a PFD?  Send some sort of HIPPA violation letter to the original debtor?  I'll pay off in full without hesitation if I can be guaranteed it won't hit my credit... I'm just so frustrated that we let it get to this point and should've just paid the bill when we first got it.

I truly appreciate any input y'all have!

[stargazer25]

I've dealt with CMRE before, hell or high water before they will delete anything. It does happen but a simple PFD won't do it. I had to prove with a ton of paperwork to get them to delete.

You might find this article of interest:

https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/medical-debt-and-your-credit-score/

With that said you might be able to avoid it posting to your CR, but for only $110 I would check with CMRE that if it's PIF that it will not report and if it does report then I would dispute under this agreement.

[Anonymous]

Wow, thanks for posting that link!  If all of that is true, then this would help in my situation.  Date of service was around June 10th, so it certainly hasn't been overdue for 180 days.

Anyone else have experience with this new rule?

[RobertEG]

Under the new National Consumer Assistance Plan, the CRAs have implemented a policy regarding medical debts that includes not including any collections in credit reports until the debt is at least 6 months old, and removing any collections that are ultimately paid by insurance.