Yesterday, I called the billing office for a consortium of doctors that doesn't negotiate with insurance companies. (Just FYI, if you go to the ER at and Texas Health Resources hospital, you will get a $450 charge on top of your insurance ER copay. Or, if you're me, you'll get two of them, on the same day, along with a charge for $200 from the hospital for one of those ER visits. Aaaaaaand I'm unemployed. Neat!)
The upshot of the telephone conversation I had with the lovely lady from billing is that I'm supposed to call the hospital, and, since I'm unemployed now, they might be able to help me out. As in, they might wipe out my hospital bills, since I'm considered indigent and all that.
Or they might just reduce the bill.
Bear in mind, she also might have told me that just to get the crying girl off the phone. Who knows?
I sent an email to the Business Office - a.k.a. the Gimme Money Department - and I was supposed to have heard from them by 5:00 today. It didn't happen. So I will have to call them tomorrow to ask if I can pretty pretty please apply to their indigent care program for those two visits to the ER back in December - at which time I was not receiving a paycheck, mind you. I haven't received one since the end of November.
If the hospital says, "Oh, okay, you poor widdle thing, we'll forgive the debt" then the third party billing office will also forgive the debt.
And that would be sweet.
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