medical bills getting taken off credit report?

[vaneivet]

does anyone know a place or how I can get a medical bill token off my credit? please help!

[fontanaman]

Hello vaneivet,

Welcome to the forums. Yes, it is possible to get medical collections deleted from your credit reports. In order to do this you need to negotiate with the collection agency that is reporting your debt. The first thing you need to do is get a copy of your credit report to get the latest and most accurate information. You can get a free yearly credit report at annualcreditreport.com (this is the official site).

The next step would be to negotiate a “pay for delete” with the collection agency. This means you write them a letter asking to delete your tradeline in exchange for your payment. You can offer to pay in full (less negotiation involved), or pay a lump sum or make arrangements to start a payment plan. It is very important that you try to get this in writing to have proof in case the agency “forgets” to honor your deal.

I was able to get two medical collections deleted from my credit reports this way. Here’s an example of a “pay for delete” letter: http://credit.about.com/od/debtcollection/a/payfordelete.htm

[Louis F]

I’ve been reading through these posts, and can tell you that there is another way to fix your medical bills, that I learned about by chance. There are a number of medical bill review companies that do this on a professional level, the best of which have professional medical and legal staff that review hospital and doctor bills for overcharges, double billing, phantom billing, and some believe, outright fraud. I was lucky and found a company called Medical Bill Rehab in Encino California that helped me with totally bogus overcharging for my emergency appendectomy. My charges came to over $19,000. By the time this company reviewed and negotiated everything, my out of pocket cost (I was uninsured last year) was $3726.00. Worth looking into. Also, I live in Northern Virginia, and my operation was at GWU hospital in Washington DC.

[fontanaman]

Hey Louis, welcome to the forums.

Thanks for the info. I’ve never heard of such companies but I can definitely see myself benefiting from a service like that in case of an emergency (considering I’m currently uninsured). $19,000 for an appendectomy is insane! Health care in this country is such a dirty business…

Did you have to pay everything at once? Also was their fee included in the final bill or was it charged separately?

[Louis F]

I hadn’t heard of it either. When the bills started coming in I freaked out and hit Google for a solution, knowing that I had to fight back, or drown in these bills.
Did you know that most emergency rooms contract out for ER doctors, anesthesiologists, and radiology? I didn’t either. That is why I said “bills”, not hospital “bill”. Now try dealing with each one of those people, while keeping your (uninsured) job, and your sanity. Not going to happen, and they know it, and they collectively blew me off when I tried talking to them on my lunch hour. Did I mention that they all threatened to send me to collections knowing that I was uninsured and likely wouldn’t pay? I decided to go with that Ca company (they go by the name: Medical Bill Rehab LLC, because upfront I seemed to get some good common sense, knowledgeable information. It took them about a month to deal with the powers that be, but ultimately got everybody to sign off which means my credit record wasn’t affected.
They offered a short-term payment plan for their fee (25% of the $15,300 total savings), but I knew a gift horse when I saw it and squeezed my savings account to get it paid off immediately. I have since learned that paying only a bit over 19% was even better than many commercial insurance rates.
Hope this helps.

[rajonleaz]

Please help with any info possible..

I have settled a medical bill in full with the collection agency yet it still appears on my credit report. Upon calling the debt collection agency, they mentioned that they cannot delete the item from my report but they can send a settlement letter, which I can use to talk to the Credit Bureau. Can someone guide me as to how I would go about this process? Any do’s and don’ts?

[fontanaman]

Hey rajonleaz,

Sorry for the late reply. Did you negotiate to have this medical bill removed from your credit report as part of your settlement? If you did not negotiate, unfortunately there’s not a lot you can do at this point. You can try sending what they call a “goodwill” letter. A goodwill letter is a letter you send to creditors asking them to request a goodwill adjustment to your credit files.

You can read more about goodwill letters here: http://credit.about.com/od/creditrepair/qt/Using-Goodwill-Letters-In-Credit-Repair.htm

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