Some hospitals sue patients over unpaid medical bills in bulk, sometimes by the hundreds of thousands. The defendants are often already facing financial hardship or even bankruptcy.
Judgments against patients in these suits can derail someone’s life but, according to experts, they don’t bring hospitals much money.
So why do hospitals do it?
Host Dan Weissmann investigates this practice with The Baltimore Banner and Scripps News and speaks to patients who’ve found themselves on the receiving end of such lawsuits.
Weissmann also speaks with Nick McLaughlin, an entrepreneur who’s making the business case for hospitals to stop trying to collect money from people who simply don’t have it.
Click to open the Transcript
Transcript: When Hospitals Sue Patients (Part 1)
Note: “An Arm and a Leg” uses speech-recognition software to generate transcripts, which may contain errors. Please use the transcript as a tool but check the corresponding audio before quoting the podcast.
[birds singing]
Dan: Hey there. Starting this episode with a field trip.
[dogs barking]
Dan (from field tape): I hear dogs. I’m in the right place.
Dan: Nick McLaughlin lives outside Kalamazoo, Michigan. The email with his address said: Long gravel driveway, blue house. He’d said he’d be outside with his dogs, enjoying a cup of coffee. This is a big lot, with a pond on one side, a lake on the other, and huge trees all around.
Nick: So yeah, when I said I was sitting out enjoying a cup of coffee, this is a pretty good spot to do it. Pretty cool bird action. We had some neat, red headed woodpeckers going this morning.
Dan: He’s lived in the area since he was in high school. His parents still live nearby. So do his in laws. He’s married to his high school sweetheart — they got married while they were still in college. That’s also when Nick started working in medical collections.
Nick: I just saw a part time job listing in the college job website for a patient financial counselor. Didn’t know what that meant. Uh, and next thing I knew I had a, uh, headset on and was talking to patients about two and three year old hospital bills that …
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Some hospitals sue patients over unpaid medical bills in bulk, sometimes by the hundreds of thousands. The defendants are often already facing financial hardship or even bankruptcy.
Judgments against patients in these suits can derail someone’s life but, according to experts, they don’t bring hospitals much money.
So why do hospitals do it?
Host Dan Weissmann investigates this practice with The Baltimore Banner and Scripps News and speaks to patients who’ve found themselves on the receiving end of such lawsuits.
Weissmann also speaks with Nick McLaughlin, an entrepreneur who’s making the business case for hospitals to stop trying to collect money from people who simply don’t have it.
Click to open the Transcript
Transcript: When Hospitals Sue Patients (Part 1)
Note: “An Arm and a Leg” uses speech-recognition software to generate transcripts, which may contain errors. Please use the transcript as a tool but check the corresponding audio before quoting the podcast.
[birds singing]
Dan: Hey there. Starting this episode with a field trip.
[dogs barking]
Dan (from field tape): I hear dogs. I’m in the right place.
Dan: Nick McLaughlin lives outside Kalamazoo, Michigan. The email with his address said: Long gravel driveway, blue house. He’d said he’d be outside with his dogs, enjoying a cup of coffee. This is a big lot, with a pond on one side, a lake on the other, and huge trees all around.
Nick: So yeah, when I said I was sitting out enjoying a cup of coffee, this is a pretty good spot to do it. Pretty cool bird action. We had some neat, red headed woodpeckers going this morning.
Dan: He’s lived in the area since he was in high school. His parents still live nearby. So do his in laws. He’s married to his high school sweetheart — they got married while they were still in college. That’s also when Nick started working in medical collections.
Nick: I just saw a part time job listing in the college job website for a patient financial counselor. Didn’t know what that meant. Uh, and next thing I knew I had a, uh, headset on and was talking to patients about two and three year old hospital bills that …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]