Medical debt

Life has been moving along at warp speed and I haven’t been able to post as much as I’d like about what’s happening financially in my life.  Little financial things have been going on like selling off stuff on craigslist/ ebay and preparing for the big kids consignment sale this weekend.  But also one major thing has occurred that really puts a kink in the financial plan: medical expenses.

One of the twins had a trip to the ER (he’s fine, just a little infection) which means a $150 co-pay and I ended up needing a minor surgery (I’m also fine).   Since we hadn’t met any of my deductible yet for the year and have a 20% patient responsibility we owe a little over $2,000 for that.  Unfortunately, the need for these medical services were totally unexpected and since we still don’t have any money set aside in an emergency fund this all means we have more debt now. 

I’m really bummed out about the med expenses for a number of reasons.  The first is that it just drives home how important the emergency fund really is and it has been so frustrating trying to get money set aside for emergencies. All that debt consolidating/ shuffling and putting my student loan in deferment a couple months ago have only allowed us to cover some of the smaller medical bills and other unexpected expenses we’ve had lately.  And every time I bring a little extra in via my side businesses or by selling something off we have some unexpected expense so nothing makes it into savings.   

I’m also bummed because we were only two monthly payments away from paying off all the medical debt from the boys’ birth.  Now we’re right back in medical debt and almost as much as we started with.  Just feels like another big step backwards.

The biggest reason I’m bummed out is that we can’t afford to make additional debt payments on anything right now.  We’re on an extremely tight budget as it is and there’s nothing left to pay towards new debt.  When I tried to set up payment plans for the medical debt, the minimum payments to the three different accounts that make up the bulk of the balance were no were near affordable with our budget.  And even though the three accounts are all through the same umbrella company because they are from different locations and people they can’t combine the accounts to try and get a lower monthly payment.

After talking with the billing department for a while and explaining our situation the lady suggested we take another approach.  Apparently after the bills go unpaid for two billing cycles they will be transferred to the internal collections department (which is not reported to the credit bureaus).  She advised us to let the bills go to internal collections at which point we can consolidate those three accounts into one.  She said that the collections department also has a lot more flexibility on repayment terms so we can get a much lower monthly payment.  The only saving grace in this situation is that by the time these new bills go to collections we will have made our last payment on the birth debt.  Hopefully we can get a repayment plan at or lower than the medical payments we are currently paying but we won't know that for another couple months.

I certainly hope I can start posting more positive news soon and start seeing some debt reduction again.