Real Talk Co.

We’ll be looking at what happens if you don’t pay medical bills in Florida.

What happens if you don’t pay medical bills in Florida?

The laws vary by each state, but you could accrue late fees with interest possibly. There’s debt collection that could happen. A lawsuit may occur. You could experience garnishments from your paycheck as well. Or you could even have a lower credit score as a result of your missed payments.

Late fees and interest

Depending on the company you were serviced by, there may be a chance that you got an inaccurate bill charged to you.

But there is a safety net that you could have applied to your situation that might even save you.

This safety net’s called The No Surprises Act.

What this act does is ensure you that a company can’t bill you unexpectedly if you received service from a facility.

Of course that’s if the facility that serviced you gave you out of network service.

So if you’re paying out of pocket or with an insurer that’s out of their network, they must give you a “good faith” estimate amount.

Debt collection

One thing that must happen in the state of Florida when dealing with debt collection is that medical services must collect from you first.

Of course, this is before the collection agency reports to the credit bureau when collecting from you.

A Kaiser Family Foundation study reported that 23 million Americans have a debt on average of $250 relating to medical bills.

With that said, it’s understood that all medical debt under $500 are free from being included in credit reports.

Sure, that’s virtually peanuts compared to what most bills are on average, but it does provide some sort of safety net for a patron.

Lawsuit

Depending on how long it takes you to get to your medical bills, you may receive a summons to appear in court for it.

The worst thing that you could do is ignore the summons.

Yeah, that’s a quick way to end up in jail over a few hundred dollars to maybe a couple thousand, that could have an agreement.

There’s actually been a 37 percent increase of lawsuits happening in Wisconsin over unpaid medical bills.

Of course, this all applies if you confirm that the bill is accurate and you do indeed owe money.

Garnishments

Hospitals that service you must first file a notice with a debt collector before they can even attempt to garnish your wages.

The good news about this situation is that you have numerous options in terms of stopping your wages from being garnished.

Of course this applies to Florida, but you may have hospitals in other areas that may try to go straight into garnishing wages.

But it usually takes a while before it gets that far, in the U.S. they’re pretty understanding about bills getting harder to pay.

Lower credit scores

It’s actually out of the ordinary to have medical facilities report your debt to credit bureaus, but the possibility is all too real regardless.

What could happen is they report you to the collection agency and what they’ll do is turn it over to the credit bureau.

It should go without saying, but if the report goes as far as to show up on your credit score, you’ll notice it’ll affect it negatively.

It’s been just recently in July of 2022 where medical markups on credit scores were starting to become irrelevant.

Feel free to call this number to confirm: 855-979-1118

Final Thoughts

To find more healthcare related topics, click here.

For more insight on how to properly take care of your medical expenses, check out this book called Never Pay The First Bill.