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This is misleading. You go to the hospital ER, you pay your deductible, go about your life. Then you get a notice from a bill collector from Dr. A's office saying you owe X for unpaid services during your ER visit. You may well get your carrier to take care of this, but you were reported to a collection service.
Tis sort of thing is very common. No action to get payment is made. Just an automatic referral to collection.
Not near the crisis that is reported breathlessly by the AP
And there the sentence: " Their figures nearly match the 36.5 percent of people in collections reported by a 2004 Federal Reserve analysis."
So, not much has changed in 10 years.
I know a few people dealing with collection agencies, but they are not in monetary trouble at all. They had trouble getting a certain gym to stop billing them once they quit. Hardly a crisis...
I know a few people dealing with collection agencies, but they are not in monetary trouble at all. They had trouble getting a certain gym to stop billing them once they quit.
Also this illustates that the default action for major corporations is to send a bill to collections after sometimes as short as 1 month of attempting to collect, rather than working in-house with the customer and trying to work things out. It really just illustrates that collections is a big industry rather than anything else.
This is misleading. You go to the hospital ER, you pay your deductible, go about your life. Then you get a notice from a bill collector from Dr. A's office saying you owe X for unpaid services during your ER visit. You may well get your carrier to take care of this, but you were reported to a collection service.
Tis sort of thing is very common. No action to get payment is made. Just an automatic referral to collection.
Not near the crisis that is reported breathlessly by the AP
Wow... that happened to me! VA was to pay 100% but the doc sent the bill to the wrong VA hospital. I knew nothing about it until I checked my credit score.
Called and told them which VA and then they got paid.
I'm sure they sent letters, but I moved to DC and the person in the house thought it was junk mail (I think). Either way, never got a letter or I would have taken care of it. Heck, why would I not? I did not have to pay...
Wow... that happened to me! VA was to pay 100% but the doc sent the bill to the wrong VA hospital. I knew nothing about it until I checked my credit score.
Called and told them which VA and then they got paid.
I'm sure they sent letters, but I moved to DC and the person in the house thought it was junk mail (I think). Either way, never got a letter or I would have taken care of it. Heck, why would I not? I did not have to pay...
Or in my case, Comcast. Apparently when I dropped my cable box off back in 2008, Comcast lost it/failed to document it. It was first reported on my credit report in 2012 and I only found out about it this month when I bought a car. I'm inclined to just let it sit there until it falls off my credit report since I've since most definitely lost the receipt I got when I dropped the cable box off at the Comcast location.
If this many people are not paying basic bills, this is a crisis. How are they going to pay for retirement, the kids college, or an emergency fund?
very misleading stat. i just got a letter from debt collections about a small bill from when our last child was born last december. it went to collections because i hadn't paid it, but I never received the original bill so i didn't know i owed.
don't know how much of the 35% i made up, but i'm hardly someone who can't pay basic bill.
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