One Defensive Strategy Against Surprise Medical Bills: Set Your Own Terms |

By writing in payment limits when signing hospital forms, patients might have leverage in negotiations over disputes that arise from surprise medical bills.

When you sign into a hospital next time, read all those pages that require a signature. For the discussion here we will limit comments to the agreement to pay all charges. Often patients are asked to sign on a computer signature line. You can also ask for a printed paper signature page.

There some things you can do to limit excessive balance billings. Patients should be proactive and not be frightened by a threat of admission being refused.

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Save Quizzify's helpful passes to your Apple Wallet to avoid surprise medical bills and ask doctors the right questions.

You don’t have to remember these questions, because, in the immortal words of the great philosopher Yogi Berra, we’ve done the remembering for you. (He didn’t actually say that, but he could have.) All you need to remember is that you’ve got them in your AppleWallet.

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When Stacey Richter’s husband recently landed in a New Jersey emergency room, fearing a heart attack, she had an additional reason for alarm: a potential big bill from the hospital if the ER wasn’t in his insurer’s network.

So she took an unusual step. Instead of simply signing the hospital’s financial and treatment consent form, Richter first crossed out sections calling for her to pay whatever amount the hospital charged. She wrote in her own payment rate of a “maximum of two times” what the federal government would pay under Medicare, which is in the ballpark, experts said, of what hospitals might consider an acceptable rate.

“And then I signed it, took a picture of it and handed it back to them,” said Richter, co-president of the consultancy Aventria Health Group.

The U.S. Congress has also considered legislation regarding excessive balance billing. The legislation contains specific requirements in regard to timely billing as well as excessive charges. Section 202, and 302