Sued by your hospital? You’re not alone

The Carlsbad Medical Center in New Mexico has sued nearly 3,000 people since 2015 and more than 500 through August of this year. (One of those who was sued was a county judge!) If the bills are not paid, the hospital garnishes patients' wages and put liens on their homes. Likewise, Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare in Memphis filed 8,300 lawsuits in the past five years, including some against their own employees. In Virginia, hospitals filed more than 20,000 lawsuits over patient debt in 2017 alone. These are all charges still owed after their insurance has paid the hospitals. 

Many are in one-hospital towns where there’s no competition. They can charge whatever they want. In Carlsbad, for example, the medical center charges five times more than Medicare would have paid for the same services. One employer in Carlsbad discovered that it would be cheaper for one of its workers to travel to Hawaii for a gall bladder operation—including airfare for two, and seven-day island cruise—than to get the procedure at the local hospital.

In 2018, more than one in four consumers nationwide were reported to credit bureaus for unpaid debt. Of those, more than half were the result of medical bills. One survey of women with breast cancer found that a third of those with health insurance had been referred to bill collectors; among those without insurance, the number rose to 77 percent. Overall, two-thirds of all bankruptcies and nearly half of all foreclosures in America today are related to medical costs.

Eighteen percent of the US economy ($3.5 trillion) is tied to health care, up from 5 percent in 1960. In 1999, medical expenses consumed 14 percent, on average, of American’s take-home pay. Now it's 31 percent of our take-home pay. I can think of better ways to spend my money.

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