Moofies, did you ever find in any of the documents you received from the debt collection agency any statement about charity care? I might have asked this before.
No, we never got any information about Charity Care. It's not in any of these court copies either. I have a couple of older papers that survived homelessness in my bag and none of them mention it either. (Incidentally, that's when they dismissed everything the first time to refile it again.)
When we filed our initial Answer/Defense, I did see it as an option on the form, but we didn't check it because we were unsure if it even applied to us. (Everything we read just said if in doubt, check unsure, so that's what we did.)
The attorney that gave us the consult last week was the first person who ever explained our rights for Care Charity, just before posting here.
On a side note, I also did my homework on the program offered from the hospital directly. They cover full cost for 'around 300%' of the National Poverty line and offer 75-90% for between 300 and 400% NPL, and have a full sliding scale payment for everyone under 400%. (They consider case by case exceptions.)
Our income is between 300-318% according to their calculator, but I'll know for sure tomorrow when I go through pay stubs and all that stuff tomorrow. (I was merely curious and ballparked the calculator.)
I'm just kind of irritated because once our insurance was denied initially, the hospital flat out refused to even talk about my account with me again even though we had corrected the insurance side issues. I got the distinct impression they were inflexible and not willing to negotiate, in other words.
Yet, here we are now, and their website says otherwise. I realize nearly 6 years later their policy has undoubtedly changed, but I'm still frustrated.
