What is one of the biggest concerns for anyone on the path to financial independence? Health insurance and medical expenses. It is the elephant in the room that can dramatically alter your FI journey or create anxiety after you’ve already reached early retirement. While we crunch numbers for investment returns and living expenses, the unpredictable nature of healthcare costs keeps many would be retirees tethered to traditional employment longer than they’d like. But what if there were strategies to navigate this complex system more effectively?
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen and while Scott is out on paternity leave, Amberly Grant is stepping into his seat and guest hosting with me. Amberly, it’s so good to see you today. It’s very nice to see you as well, Mindy. Thank you for joining me. Oh, I’ll thank you for having me today. Bigger Pockets has the goal of creating one million millionaires. You’re in the right place if you want to get your financial house in order because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you are starting. Today, we’re joined by Jared Walker, who specializes in something most people don’t even realize is possible, negotiating medical bills. He is the founder of dollarfor.org and we are so excited to learn from him today. Super excited since I just had a baby last year and I need to know this stuff. Before we bring on Jared, I have a quick question. How many hours did you spend last month chasing down rent payments, sorting your piles of receipts, or filling in spreadsheets? If the answer is too many, then I need to tell you about Baseline, a trusted Bigger Pockets pro partner. Baseline is an all-in-one banking and financial platform built specifically for real estate investors. Baseline automates your rent collection and uses AI powered bookkeeping to auto tag transactions for instant cash flow visibility and reporting without doing any manual expense tracking. Plus, they have tons of other features like recurring payments, multi-user access, and free wires to save you time and money. Less financial busy work means more time to to scale your portfolio with confidence. Sign up today at baselane.com/biggerpockets and claim your exclusive $100 bonus to kickstart your path to becoming a pro. Now, let’s hear from Jared.
Jared, thank you for joining us today. I’m really excited to talk to you. Thank you so much for having me. I, I appreciate it. What led you to focusing on negotiating medical bills? I mean, you weren’t laying in your bed at seven years old saying, oh, when I grow up, I want to negotiate medical bills for, for a living. That’s correct. Uh, this was not the dream. I got into this in 2012. My wife and I were sitting at home. She got a phone call and her aunt had passed away from cancer. Um, so a couple minutes later, I got a phone call. My cousin had gone into labor, seven weeks premature. Baby needed a heart surgery to live and both families, same day, same hour hit with these massive medical emergencies. And I remember, uh, the conversations were, how are we going to pay for it? And that really frustrated me. I was probably 23, 24 at the time and this was kind of like the first run in with the US healthcare system, realizing that when you have a medical crisis, a lot of times you have a financial crisis at the same time. And I wanted to help people in that situation. So I, uh, grew up in Portland, Oregon and I started originally Dollar for Portland, and it was a crowdfunding platform to help people pay medical bills. So that is kind of how it all started. Me, you know, very grassroots doing these small coffee shops, breweries, music venue, like grassroots fundraising, taking the money and paying medical bills for, for local families. First of all, that’s lovely, but second of all, I’m so angry that you had to do that because we can, I think we can all agree that the US medical system is broken and in need of a giant fix. And I thought Warren Buffett and Jamie Dimonn and was it Jeff Bezos? I thought they were all getting together and they were going to fix it. And it turns out that they all got together and then they didn’t fix anything. And that, that story kind of went away. I feel like there’s been a lot of uh people that have said, oh, we’re going to fix the, you know, healthcare system. And yeah, unfortunately, that has not happened. It’s the number one cause of bankruptcy in America. Um, it is, you know, medical debt is a huge problem. There’s definitely no lack of need. Like we are busy doing this work, right? Uh, so yeah, unfortunately, we’re still kind of stuck in that you can kind of lose everything if if you get sick at the wrong time. I feel incredibly fortunate that one of my jobs in my late teens was working in the HMO office for a large medical complex as a temp. And I learned a lot about the then HMO system. I don’t, do we even have an HMO system anymore where you had to like call ahead and get permission from your primary care doctor to go to a different doctor. Um, I feel like I have saved myself tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills just by knowing that you had to do that. And you don’t know what you don’t know. So for people who are in these, these situations, it feels shameful. Oh, I should have known this or I should have asked and and I want everybody listening to know that this isn’t a shameful thing because you don’t know what you don’t know. So you didn’t know or your cousin and your aunt’s family didn’t know how they were going to pay for these bills. I didn’t know that you could really negotiate bills until after I had my second baby. She was born in the beginning of November and all the hospital bills came due in December right when we were spending a lot of money for Christmas. And I called them up and I said, is there any way I could like split these payments? The bill was $1,100 and they said, we can spread that out over 11 months if you need more than that, then you’ll have to speak to a different department. I was like, I was just looking for 500 now and 500 later. Like this is awesome. So I’m like, yes, sign me up for that. I’m I’m good with $100 a month for my baby. Um, but at the time, I had really great insurance. That was just my out of pocket. It’s shocking to me that you can negotiate these bills. Like I don’t negotiate I don’t go to the grocery store and ring it up and be like, oh, can I just give you 50? How did you discover that you could negotiate these bills? Because I think most people just pay them when they come due. You definitely touched on a few things there one, the shame. I mean, and and then I think just the panic, right? You get a bill and it’s like a lot of times you have sticker shock, a lot of times you, you can freak out when you see the bill start coming in. And then the other thing is like you get the hospital bill, then you get the, the anesthesiologist and the surgeon and the, you know, all the different providers within the hospital. Uh, so it can be quite overwhelming. So, you know, I I started uh because I would raise, you know, a couple thousand bucks each month and then I was just trying to stretch the dollar as much as I possibly could. So we’d find a family that that needed some help and you know, I would call the hospital and just kind of be that annoying pest, right? And uh ask ask questions about the bill and um I started, you know, realizing that okay, this does seem to be something that there is a little bit of wiggle room here. I did that for years in about 2019, I met an attorney and he asked me if I’d ever heard of something called hospital charity care uh or hospital financial assistance. And I had never heard of it. So I kind of dived into these policies and realized when the Affordable Care Act passed, it required nonprofit hospitals, which is most in America, to have these programs. And if you are within a certain income range, the hospitals are actually legally required to either write off or reduce your hospital bills. Um and I had no idea that those programs existed. So I had spent years paying medical bills for low and middle income families that all would have been eligible for these programs. That was kind of the next step realizing, okay, yeah, you can negotiate these medical bills, but also there are programs in place that can actually reduce the bills or wave them entirely. Um so that’s kind of, you know, the next the next step. So quick question, you said nonprofit hospitals are legally required to write off or reduce. Are they legally required to inform you that they have to do this? On paper, yes, they should. So section 501R if you really want to nerd out on it, it basically says that hospitals, I think the the language is these policies need to be widely publicized and widely available. So what does that mean? For most hospitals, that means that they have a poster in the ER somewhere. Uh and the application is, you know, hidden somewhere on the website. So most patients leave the hospital without having any knowledge of these programs. Um so we have millions and millions of people that are declaring bankruptcy or on payment plans for bills that they actually don’t have to pay. Um so that’s kind of what dollar four stepped into was how do we enforce these policies and how do we get patients access to these really complicated, you know, applications and even seeing if you qualify can be difficult. It’s pretty incredible that you took money and paid people’s medical bills. I’m sure that made them feel like supported, heard and out of a financial bind. And you mentioned that they didn’t even need to pay these bills because a hospital would have written them off or given them a reduced rate. Do you have a sense of how much money now you’ve saved people with all this knowledge? Or maybe how much you’ve saved yourself personally? You know, it’s funny. I just had a medical bill. It was $1,300, um and I was able to negotiate it down to like three, 350. Uh so I like I’ve probably saved myself, I don’t know, maybe $5,000 over over the years. But with Dollar 4, the the nonprofit, we’ve actually, we have been able to write off over $83 million of medical debt for people all throughout the the country. So Wow. That’s a shocking number to us. That’s a shocking number to me. 83 million is, I don’t know if you know this, that’s kind of a big number. It is, it is a big number. I mean, so this kind of all unfolded at the beginning of 2021. Um, I had found out about charity care and and hospital financial assistance and I just felt like an idiot because I again, I’ve been paying bills for people that would have been eligible for these programs. So I ended up getting on Tik Tok uh and I posted a video that just said, hey, if you have a hospital bill, you should check this out. You know, this is how you can find your policy and I just told people what charity care was. The video ended up getting like 30 million views and it just exploded and I had all these people reaching out asking for help. So since then, we’ve created a database of every hospital in the country. So we’ve got about 8,000 hospitals in here that has all of their financial assistance and charity care policy data and and eligibility criteria because it’s not, it is not standardized, unfortunately. So every hospital is different, every application is different. So now a patient can very quickly put in their household size, their income, what hospital and it tells them immediately if they’re eligible at that hospital and then we help them with the paperwork, submit it to the hospital and and advocate on their behalf. Oh my god, Jared, I saw that video. I’m like, that’s how I know your face. That’s hilarious. I don’t remember when I saw it because I’m sure it’s probably gone around a couple times, but it was actually one of the inspirations for me for checking out the hospital that I was going to for my child and seeing if they had, you know, some better self-pay options versus insurance options, etc. So you gave me some inspiration. I unfortunately didn’t follow through with a lot of it or I tried to but was blocked by the insurance company when I was submitting some of the self-pay bills and things and I ended up giving up on the process and they took my thousand bucks and I just couldn’t do it. But I just remember your video and feeling so empowered to stand up against kind of the practices of these companies. So, um thanks for that. Thank you. I appreciate it. And you know, at the time at the beginning of 2021, we’re like right in the middle of COVID. I think that a medical crisis and and health care was kind of at the top of a lot of people’s minds. So I think it was a timing thing, you know, people see that video and go, oh my gosh, you know, I have a, I have an unpaid hospital bill. I can, you know, yeah, it was a very, very interesting time for, for me and the organization. My dear listeners, we want to hit 100,000 subscribers on YouTube and we need your help. Hop on over to youtube.com/biggerpocketsmoney and make sure you’re subscribed to this channel while we take a quick break.
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Thanks for sticking with us. Do you have a quick link to your on your website that we can send people to to get that hospital charity care information? Oh yeah. So it’s just dollarfor.org. It goes directly to the eligibility screener where you can see if you’re eligible. Oh, that’s awesome. We’ve actually mapped all of the applications as well. So you can fill it out on your phone or whatever, and it’s it takes your info and fills out the hospital info. That’s how we’ve been able to, you know, eliminate 80, 80 plus million dollars in medical debt just enforcing these policies that a lot of times hospitals hide unfortunately. So, and you know, it’s 80, 80 million like we’re very proud of that. That’s very exciting. Um, unfortunately, every year hospitals fail to distribute about $14 billion of charity care that should be going out to to these patients. So we have a lot of work to do, I’ll say. I’ll say. Um, but you’re doing a really great job right now. Okay. So for people who have a higher income, someone like me, and do not qualify for charity care or any of these programs within a hospital and they’ve received a medical bill, which I did in you know, all of 2022 from my pregnancy then and then 2024 with my second baby. Can you explain what medical bill negotiation actually involves and how common is it for us to actually do this? I would say first, take a deep breath. You know, I mentioned a lot of times people panic, people, uh, you know, stress out about that and that’s, that’s natural, but you have time. A lot of people think that, you know, these hospitals are going to send you to collections and ruin your credit right away. They actually are, you’re really not able to be impacted in any way until a year has passed. So they cannot impact your credit score until it is one year without payment. So you do have time and you are going to continue to get those, uh, you know, bills that say, you know, final notice and and all of that. You can take a deep breath. You have time until it will impact you. The second thing is what can you offer? If you have cash, usually you can get anywhere from 30 to 50% off. I mentioned earlier, I got a $1,200 bill down to, you know, 300 with the simple magic words of what is the settlement amount? Uh, that is where I start all the time. So I call the provider and I say, hey, I’ve got a bill. I’ve got some money. What is the settlement amount? If if I can close this out right now, what will you take? Uh, because you have to keep in mind, they want to close this out just as much as you do, right? And uh these bills, we know that these bills are inflated. Um, we know that there are uh I think the last, there was a report that came out that says that 80% of medical bills have billing errors in them. So like these bills are usually not correct. So I start there. What is the settlement amount? And usually they will take less. Now, you’re always going to have providers that might say, you know, oh, we don’t do that. We don’t do that. I usually try three or four times before I’ll actually accept that because if they say that and again, this is an annoying process. Like, you know, you’re gonna wait on hold, you are going to, uh, you know, talk to people on the phone that that aren’t gonna be happy about it or whatever. But you can usually negotiate these. Uh, so that, that’s kind of where I start. I guess I’ll pause there. Any, any questions on like, if you have cash, negotiate kind of, kind of thing? No, I love that. What is the the settlement amount? Like I wouldn’t know to ask that. You know, a payment plan can be great for a lot of people. But if you have cash, then you can usually just close it out right then and there. You’re not usually going to be able to negotiate a lower bill and then ask to be on a payment plan for the lower bill, right? You’re going to have to either pay it up front or get on the payment plan. So, uh, that is kind of, you know, step one. So, okay, let’s, let’s say you don’t have extra cash and you’re you’re not able to do that. So then I think you would go to step three, which is find the errors. Uh, or at least see if there are errors in the in the bill. Um, number one, ask for an itemized bill. Just asking for an itemized bill alone can can save you money because they are going to look through that. And this is where you see those very common stories of, you know, the $75 aspirin or the $50 Band-Aid or you know, what whatever it is where the hospital or the provider will usually look at those and adjust those. So just by asking for an itemized bill, a lot of times it can come back lower. Uh, and then this kind of stuff is more time consuming and a little bit like investigating, you know, what, what is the cost so you can get on a website like um healthcare blue book and you can look up the CPT codes and you can see like, are they overcharging you? Um because when you get that itemized bill, it’s going to have a lot more detail in the bill and you can kind of see like, was I charged for something that didn’t happen or was I charged twice for something that did happen or whatever it may be and a lot of times you can kind of call the billing office and call out some of these errors. Again, it’s a little in the weeds. It can be a little intimidating, but, you know, I have done this. It works and uh even just hopping on YouTube and and, you know, Googling what what the codes are and, you know, seeing what to say like it it can help. So if you don’t have the cash and you’re just trying to lower the bill, that’s another option. Obviously, I’m always going to say like number one, always see if you’re eligible for charity care. I know like that this whole thing is like, well, hey, if you don’t qualify, but a lot of times people disqualify themselves for this program because they just think, oh, it’s not for me, you know, I’m not, I’m not super poor. Just as an example, I’m in the Pacific Northwest, every single hospital here will wave 100% of your hospital bill if you are at or below 300% of the federal poverty guidelines, and then they will give a discount up to 400%. So if you’re a family of four, you can make about $120,000 gross annual income and still receive some type of discount. A lot of times these policies can be a little more generous uh than people think. And then I would say the final thing like get on a payment plan. Uh usually, you know, you can you can talk those down pretty low uh to something that’s affordable if, you know, if all else fails. I think this is really, really important for everybody on, well, on American healthcare to know about. But I also think this is really important, especially for people, uh, who are early retirees because you now don’t have any more income or probably don’t have any more income, and you get hit with a medical bill. I remember I had my appendix out in 1997 and it cost $27,000, which saying that just seems so stupid. Like how is it only $27,000 for surgery and three days of hospital care? But it was uh that’s what I remember and I don’t know if that was my dad’s portion because I was still under his insurance. Maybe I’m just misremembering it. Maybe there was a one in front of there that just seems so cheap to me. But either way, I was not going to be able to pay a $27,000 invoice for this random thing that may or may not happen. Amberly, do you still have your appendix? I do. Okay. Jared, you got your appendix? I do. Yeah. You know what’s gone up since 1997? Appendectomies. So having the ability to ask these questions that now you know, do I qualify for hospital charity care? Go to dollarfor.org and that’s dollar f o r.org and throw it in there. See if you do qualify. And if you don’t qualify, ask what the settlement amount is. See if you can get on a payment plan. I love this information so much. I’m so happy that you were on this show with us today, but we’re not done. We’ve got a lot more to talk about. Are there specific types of medical expenses that are more negotiable than others? I would say you have a really good chance with hospitals. Um if you’re going to, you know, physical therapy or you’re going to uh the dentist or you’re going to, you know, it it might be a little bit more hit or miss. I mean, most of the time we’re dealing with hospital bills and bills within hospitals. So, um imaging or labs or uh the bill that I mentioned earlier, the $1,300 bill that that was down to 300, that was uh labs, just a, you know, labs at the hospital. So I think that once you start getting into smaller clinics and and stuff like that, you’re probably going to have a harder time negotiating. But, you know, typically those bills aren’t tens of thousands of dollars, right? They’re they’re usually more affordable. So, um I would say hospitals are kind of where we see the most success. So I have a very important question before you go on to the next one. When you call, do you end up crying on the phone every single time? Or is that just me? That’s just you. I’ve gotten pretty frustrated with people on the line, but I I, you know, I have a couple videos on this where it’s like, okay, how kind can I be to this person? And also like I do want to tell them my situation. Like you are, you are talking with another human. The odds are the person on the other line has been in your situation. Like medical debt is something that is, is a big fear and for, for a lot of people and again, number one cause of bankruptcy and a lot of people deal with it. So I think that you can appeal to their emotions as well. So it sounds like for you, you said, be nice, appeal to them, and then hopefully they’ll be able to help. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, there are times, I’m even uh when I, when I talk to people, I will crack jokes, I will, you know, I’ll be like, hey, like I know that I’m being that person. I know that I’m being annoying right now, but like I’m going to need to talk to your supervisor. Like it’s or whatever it is. So like most of the time, I feel like they are able to do this, but obviously they’ve been trained to not, you know, negotiate too much or whatever, but um, you know, typically if, if you are persistent enough, uh, you can get it. And it there have been many times when I start, I say, okay, what’s a settlement amount? And they’ll give me an amount. And I will say, okay, well, that’s not good enough. I’ll call back later. And I’ll call back the next week and if I have done that, I don’t know, three, four, five times and until I get a number that I like because that’s the thing is I’ve gotten in trouble for saying this, but I stand by it. Like these are fake numbers for the most part. Like they can be negotiated down almost always if they’re going to, you know, give you 10% off right away, you could probably get 30 or 40% off if you, if you wait and you have time and again, you have the cash. It can be annoying and it can take a while, but you can save a lot of money doing it. We have to take this one final ad break, but more amazing tips for negotiating medical bills after this.
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Welcome back to the show. I’m just gonna show how crazy those numbers are, which is I’m Canadian. I had to go back to Canada for visa reason for my husband and we had our baby in the US but I wanted to get Canadian numbers for having my baby just in case I had to pay out of pocket because something happened and I ended up in hospital there. So I call them, I say hello, I’m going, what is the most I’m going to pay for a C section if I come to your hospital? They say one second, put me on hold, come back, clearly looked at numbers and said $5,500. What? Yes. $5,000 Mindy. I had two c-sections. They were not $5,000. Those bills were shocking. The average cost of a c-section in Colorado is $35 to $50,000. I decided I was going to do an experiment and called the hospital in Colorado and say, hey, what would it cost if I were to show up and do a c-section without insurance? We can’t tell you that. We can’t tell you. You’ll have to find out at the end of it, right? And so just that, you know, when you you said it at the very beginning and I felt it was so, it resonated with me in others is that when you go into an emergency, you also go into that financial emergency. So health and finances are intertwined in the United States and that’s such a difficult place to be where in Canada, knowing that that bill, I would, I know what the number is. I know it would happen, made me feel at ease, more at ease than going into the United States and having my baby down there. So, thank you for for mentioning that. Though you might get in trouble for saying that they are made up numbers, I think that’s a really good representation of, you know, that’s cash prices right there are totally different. Yeah, the the cash price. I mean, there have been times where like I have health insurance and I will go and ask, so this is always like freaks people out, but I will tell them like I don’t want to apply my insurance here because I would rather pay the cash price because the cash price is cheaper than if you were to apply my insurance. So that’s another, you know, obviously that’s kind of a lot of people are usually dealing with this after the fact. It’s an emergency. They’re not like shopping around or or whatever. But um there are there are ways to keep the cost down on the front end as well. And then, yeah, you mentioned health and and money. Yeah, they are intertwined and you have so many people that I think it’s one in three Americans that just neglects care that they need because of fear of the cost, which that shouldn’t be happening. And then getting the bills is a lot of times impacts people’s mental health and stress and anxiety and all that. So, yeah. Jared, I know that we’ve asked you a ton of questions today. What are some of the most frequently asked questions you get that maybe we didn’t think to ask? Yes. So a lot of times, uh, people think that you’re not able to apply for hospital financial assistance if you have insurance. Um so most of the time that’s not the case. You can apply and if you have, let’s say you have a $5,000 deductible and you’re eligible for charity care, the hospital would actually wave that amount. So don’t disqualify yourself. Again, you know, I said that earlier. You know, sometimes hospitals will deny for certain reasons. The most common is that you’re out of the income range, but there are other things like you’re not a resident of the state uh or or something like that. So if you are, let’s say you’re traveling and you have an emergency. That is something that we we fight for patients and we usually get those overturned. When you’re filling out these applications, there’s a lot of things that it seems like the hospitals are trying to like get you on certain things. That is why, you know, it’s good to work with an advocate. And and Dollar 4 is a a free service. We are a nonprofit, all the stuff that we do is completely free, uh no strings attached. So we we do not charge to help with with medical bills. I love that. How do you generate income? So we are 100% funded through philanthropy. Uh it is all donations. So, you know, we’ve been able to turn every dollar donated into a little over $20 of medical debt relief uh for people. So I would say like we’re a really efficient nonprofit. We have kind of two big expenses. We have our staff and we have the tech that that kind of runs it and and, you know, makes it so that we can efficiently do this work uh and that that costs money. So we we raised money from donors and uh foundations and all that. That’s awesome. Um I really, really appreciate your time today, Jared. This was incredibly informative and people can find you at dollarfor.org. All right. Thank you so much for your time today, Jared. I had such a great time talking to you and we’ll talk to you soon. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. Amberly, that was such an amazing episode. I absolutely loved everything that Jared had to say. I loved his tips. What implications do you think this has for financial independence and the community in general? One thing I want to talk about before we even go into that is we need hospitals as much as we are maybe saying that they have these bad practices. I do want to acknowledge the fact that this is something that’s important to all of us in our everyday life, especially in emergency situations. And we wish it were different, but it is a necessary part of our life. When it comes to financial independence, there are so many tricks and tips that he told us that we can do to lower our healthcare costs in retirement. When someone is leaving a W2, they normally have really good health insurance and then they go to maybe a less great health insurance depending on a marketplace. There’s a really great option he mentioned of paying cash. So first of all, asking what is the cash price versus the insurance price? Because if you don’t think you’re going to max out your deductible, it might not make sense to put money towards it and instead pay cash. So just that alone as an early retiree and I might be pulling from my HSA at that point or something else. I think that’s a really good tip. Reduce those expenses in the moment by choosing a cash buy it. Yeah, I love that. I think that’s a great tip. I had never heard of hospital charity care and I have been in the hospital, I think three times in my life and that never came up. Not once. And I wasn’t in this financial position at either one of those three times. So I think that that is unfortunate that they don’t share this more willingly. But it’s fortunate that dollar4.org does. So I’m I’m glad that he was able to share that with us. Asking what the settlement amount is once you have the bill in hand, if you haven’t already asked for the cash price. If you can get a big discount, jump on it and pay it. And especially with early retirees, we have cash on hand. So more than likely, we can actually pay that bill right up front. Like, you know, he was saying that some people don’t have that cash. We do and so we have that a benefit of us retiring early and having the cash available is to pay that bill when they say, hey, it’s 40% lower, pay it today, we got it. You know what else we have on our hands as early retirees? Time. So we can ask for an itemized bill and then take the time to go through it. I didn’t have a prostate removal here. You know, I didn’t have my appendix out. That was in 1997. So just going through the bill, everybody makes mistakes. People entering the bills are human. I would not characterize it as the hospital is just trying to sneak one past you, but it’s your right to have an itemized bill in hand and it’s going to be like this thick. The bill is just going to keep coming and coming. But going through that bill, I don’t remember this. I didn’t have this. I didn’t have this. At least you get those incorrect items off the bill and then you can start negotiating. You don’t want to negotiate on the whole thing and then discover issues. Yeah, I thought the bill that they sent was itemized because I had listened to his TikTok and was having my first baby and thought, okay, I can apply this. And turns out I wasn’t even looking at the right places. So it’s really cool to know that you can reach back out, ask for an itemized bill, and then, as we know, CPT codes, which are current procedural terminology codes, um, you know, all reference one specific experience in the hospital. So it can be your ultrasound, it can be whatever else you might be getting. And so you can see exactly what they said they did and did they actually do that thing. So that’s what you would look, is look at those CPT codes and compare them. and you can even Google CPT codes. I’ve done that recently to see what it is that that code actually refers to. Yeah, and those are universal. Like CPT code 915 is the same thing in every hospital, in every doctor’s office. If that’s, I don’t know what 915 is, but they’re universal. So you can look that up and be like, no, I didn’t have this done. Or yes, I did have this done, then move on to the next one. Another tip he gave us was the were you charged multiple times for the one thing. Let’s say you had an epidural when you had your baby, did you have one epidural or did you have 14 epidurals? Did you have a private room? No, I was in a semi-private room or, you know, are they charging you with the c-section when you actually had a vaginal birth? There’s all sorts of mistakes. I’m sure those codes, it’s just a a fat finger. I meant to hit 915 and I hit 925 or I hit 917. It’s so easy to make a mistake that could cost you tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Double check it. Ask for an itemized bill. That should be the first thing that you do when you get a bill like that. The last thing I can think of for us early retirees is that we have a very close knit community. I know of three people who will hop on a phone call with me while I call the hospital and give me some support. So if you are in a position where you do end up crying all the time when you’re calling them, or you feel overwhelmed, or you don’t know what to ask, find a friend and have them on the phone with you. My friend Kim will do this and she’ll literally hop on the phone, help to ask the right questions, making sure the conversation is going in the way that it should. And so take that time, phone a friend. Yeah, I love that tip. I know that you are going to cry about this, so I’m going to come over. I’m going to be there and when you’re breaking down, you can say, you know what, I’m going to give this phone to my friend Mindy. She’s going to ask on my behalf. You have my permission to speak with my friend. And then I’m not invested in it other than I want to make sure that you’re okay. So I can ask these questions. What is the settlement amount? Can you give me an itemized bill? Can you explain this to me? Why we are being charged for these things? When I don’t have a skin in the game on this, then it’s a lot easier for me to ask those questions. I’m not getting as frustrated as you might be because ultimately, it’s not my money. It’s so much easier to negotiate on someone else’s behalf than your own. So I think that’s a really great uh suggestion telling them they can speak for me, um and giving that permission. Yep. Amberly, I thought this was an awesome episode, but I think it’s time to get out of here. See ya. All right. That wraps up this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. She is Amberly Grant. I am Mindy Jensen saying, after a while crocodile. When you’re ready to start your business, Northwest registered agent helps you do more than just file paperwork. You get all the tools to build a real business identity from day one, a business address, website, phone number, operating agreement, free guides and more at no extra cost. 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