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Do you guys live in a no fault state? Did he cause the accident?

Yes, they do have room to bring the charges down. He needs to make his case though. I visited the ER one time because the local emergent care wasn't open at 2 am. They charged me about 6k at first. When a lady from the hospital called so I could set up financing with them, I told her I would've suffered instead of coming in had I known it would cost so much. She knocked my bill down to 4k after that. Not much but it's something. (My visit only needed topical lidocaine, $800 by itself from the ER btw).

That's a pretty good price for the MRI and ambulance I'd think.

Ask the hospital for an itemized bill and go from there.

A lot of time they will settle for 50% cash payment ..that's still 10k payment though.

There's also a lot of charity's that pay hospital bills partially or fully, my brother had a 15k bill paid in full by a charity and he isn't even considered low income.

Other than that, if it were me, I'd just tell the hospital I can pay 15-20 bucks a month indefinitely or nothing. I'm not 100% sure but hospital debt may not affect your credit.

He might be able to file a claim against the auto insurance since a lot of policies include bodily injury coverage. If he was not at fault, he might even want to talk to his auto insurance company about filing a claim against his insurance and having them subrogate the claim.

First thing is to ask for an itemized bill. that will usually drop it by a bunch since they have trouble making the number up and matching it to services rendered.

Second: once I get that bill I would go down to the hospital and see if they have any discounted service for non-insurance/low income. They usually does.

once all said and done you could probably look at half that bill if not less

If he wasn't at fault the other party's auto insurance may also pay some of the bill.

Unfortunately that’s probably a fair market price for an ER visit depending on where he lives. By law providers are not allowed to charge different prices for services so what happens is the retail price for healthcare is dramatically higher than what the provider expects in return from the insurance companies. For example, if your buddy had good health insurance, his actual financial responsibility would have been much less. Just one of the many ways our healthcare system is broken.

However as some have mentioned already, many hospitals/clinics realize that uninsured patients will end up with the largest bill and many of them will have a patient financial assistance or advocacy department to help patients negotiate down their bill based on their ability to pay - sometimes at significant discounts. I would definitely ask your buddy to reach out to the hospital.

I am a physician and I always thought I had good insurance until I went into the ER for a kidney stone (the same hospital I worked at) and received a bill for over $2k after - turns out I had a high deductible plan.

he was at fault. His policy covered 10k of his medical expenses, but he is now on the hook for 11k

he was at fault. His policy covered 10k of his medical, but now he needs to come up with 11k

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good advice, thanks