Doctor Prepper™ interviews Al DiLiberto about your hospital bills and how to reduce them!
Back in 2003, Al DiLiberto had an emergency clinic visit that turned into a 3-week hospitalization. The results of that incident drew his interest in the cost of medical care. When he received his 13-page itemized invoice for treatment, he realized there were many overcharges and items charged that were not part of his stay.
Initially, the emergency hospital visit of about 2 hours was $20,000, and then the hospital stay amounted to more than $140,000! Though his insurance covered most of it, the 2 hospitals were asking for additional money from him personally. He learned about the benefits and the need for hospital advocacy through a friend whose business was reviewing medical bills for worker’s compensation claims. Thanks to her review, Al learned that he had been overcharged and was eventually able to avoid having to pay all the overcharges to either hospital.
How to Lower Your Hospital Bills with Al DiLiberto [ 48:32 ] Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download
Al became more interested, and since he was in the medical care business, he began to learn the following about the pain of modern medicine:
Medical bills are the biggest cause of U.S. Bankruptcies
In 2013, there were more than 600,000 Medically-related bankruptcies (there were only 369,000 home fires in the same year!)
You must have fire insurance on your home in order to get a mortgage.
You’re not required to have health insurance to get a mortgage, yet you risk losing your home if you have serious medical bills.
Unfortunately, medical insurance doesn’t fill the bill completely. With co-pays and high deductibles of $5,000 or $10,000––and more––many, many people will accumulate medical bills this year that they can’t pay off. The Affordable Health Care act isn’t going to eliminate the personal share problem.
The Henry Kaiser Family Foundation has much information on this. Do a Google search for the report: Medical Debt Among People With Health Insurance.
