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Even if you’re being hounded by collection agencies, it’s still not too late to fight your medical bill.
At Resolve we’ve seen hundreds of medical billing cases and successfully saved our patients enormous amounts of money by using smart medical bill negotiation tips and negotiating directly with the hospital to lower your hospital medical bill.
While it may seem odd at first, it’s very possible that the number on your medical bill may be fully negotiable. In fact, the initial number hospitals charge averages over 4x their actual costs, and can be up to 10-15x their actual costs. If you haven’t received a discount on your medical bill (either from having health insurance or a ‘self-pay’ discount given to those without insurance), it may be worthwhile to try negotiating your medical bills to see what can be done to lower the amount that you owe.
Below we’ve listed the top 7 medical bill negotiation tips and techniques our negotiators use to maximize savings. These techniques are born out of negotiating strategies taught at the nation’s top business and law schools and improved by direct experience negotiating medical bills. So, let’s jump into our recommended medical bill negotiation tips!
The best thing that you can do first when negotiating medical bills is to find someone on the hospital’s side who’s willing to help. Not only can that person guide you through the process and help you figure out what you need to do (or even what to ask for), they can also go to bat for you internally to get things done.
However, this is far easier said than done. In many instances - the people manning the front lines of medical billing offices are both trained to side step questions and are not empowered enough to drive things forward. While there are exceptions to the above, usually the best way to search for an internal advocate is to explain your situation and then politely but firmly request to speak to a supervisor.
It’s also important to keep in mind that you need to get people to want to work with you. While dealing with extremely high medical bills can be very emotional - angry accusations, yelling, or even overt stubbornness can cause people on the other end of the line to dig in their heels and refuse to help you. The person on the other end of the line did not cause the issue nor set the healthcare pricing that you’re dealing with. Expressing frustration (and even fear or sadness) at the situation is fine, just try to avoid expressing it at the individual specifically.
When describing your situation, it’s important to avoid accusatory language such as “you” and “your”. Instead talk about what happened and how much of an impact the medical bill has on you. If you get an answer that sounds crazy (for instance we’ve had hospitals suggest going on a payment plan for a $300,000 bill) - questions such as “how am I supposed to do that?” come off as accusatory. Instead restate your position, express fear that their proposed solution won’t work for you and ask for suggestions to help make it work or come up with an alternative path.
Finally - everyone wants to look good for their boss, and figuring out how to do this can help you win over an advocate, which leads us to our next suggestion.
Negotiation classes at top business and law schools don’t emphasize squeezing every last drop out of the person you’re negotiating about. Instead, they focus on identifying a Win-Win Solution - that is an agreement that benefits both parties.
Like finding an advocate, this is far easier said than done. For this medical bill negotiation tip, we recommend working to figure out what the key metric that the person on the other end of the line is being measured on. That is, what do they care about? Whether it’s collecting a percentage of money upfront, lowering ‘outstanding balances’ on the books, or getting people on a payment plan - it’s important to understand what the person on the other end of the line is looking at when negotiating medical bills.
At Resolve we see situations where hospitals want to collect a certain percentage above their costs, lower total outstanding accounts receivable that’s over 12 months overdue, and a host of other metrics. Each situation requires its own thought process on how to best set things up and proceed.
Once you reach the right person (your internal advocate), you can directly ask up front what metric they’re most concerned about. Saying something along the lines of “I can’t afford to pay what’s currently being charged but I’d like to work out something that I can pay and satisfies hospital requirements - what metrics are you most concerned about so I can propose something that works for everyone?” can be very effective when negotiating medical bills.
Then, it’s a matter of crafting a solution that works, whether its paying a lump sum up front in exchange for a significant discount on your medical bills or setting up a payment plan, or a host of other options.
While we’ve touched on this in the previous medical bill negotiation tips, this can’t be emphasized enough. The person you’re talking to on the other end of the line may be able to solve your medical bill problem, but they certainly didn’t create it.
As mentioned above, try not to use accusatory language - avoid saying “you’re charging me” or “you guys are charging me”. Rather talk about how “these charges are more than I can afford”.
The idea here is to avoid putting people on the defensive, as we all want to dig in our heels when we feel like we’re being attacked.
