3 Ways to Handle a Surprise Medical Expense – An unexpected medical expense can ruffle even the best budgets. Unfortunately, there’s a good chance you’ll have to deal with one.
Accidents happen to everyone, insured or not, and they usually arrive when you’re low on funds and your credit score is scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Fielding a medical and financial emergency simultaneously is stressful. If you’re worried about how you’ll pay for an unexpected lab test, prescription, or visit to the clinic, keep scrolling. There are ways to handle these bills, regardless of your savings or credit score.
Should You Take out a Loan?
Borrowing money is an option, even if you have bad credit. Online instalment loans for bad credit exist to provide backup for those usually denied funding by the biggest financial institutions.
But like any personal loan, online instalment loans for those with bad credit come with interest and other fees. These charges get added to your online loan principal to increase what you pay overall.
As a result, online direct lenders recommend bad credit instalment loans as safety nets when you have no other options.
What Are Your Options Before Bad Credit Installment Loans?
Below are the options you can check before borrowing.
1. Get an Itemized Bill
First, you’ll want to make sure you’re paying a fair charge for the care you receive. You can do that by asking for an itemized bill, which lists the cost of each supply used and the service provided.
Sometimes, this breakdown will reveal you’ve been overcharged for a simple bandage or cotton swab. This gives you a chance to argue against these inflated prices and bring down your costs.
2. Ask Your Healthcare Provider for a Payment Plan
If you can’t afford to pay your bill all at once, talk to your medical provider about a payment plan. Plenty of healthcare companies offers financing plans available to help patients cover their expenses.
Generally speaking, this arrangement breaks your bill into multiple fixed payments, so you’ll pay a small portion of your bill each month until you wipe out your debt.
In this way, payment plans are very similar to online loans with monthly payments. But here, your “loan” is the existing medical expense that you pay off over time. And just like an online loan, your healthcare provider may apply charges on top of what you owe.
3. Lookup Your Hospital’s Charity Care Policy
If you’ve spent some time in the hospital, you may be buried under so much medical debt that a payment plan or instalment loan won’t cut it.
If your hospital is a non-profit, it must have financial assistance or a charity care program. This plan offers medical bill forgiveness to low-income patients on a sliding scale. If you make under a certain amount of money, your hospital will forgive 100% of your bills.
To find your hospital threshold for forgiveness, just google your hospital’s name and financial assistance or charity care. From there, you should be directed to the hospital’s policy to see if you’re covered.
The Takeaway:
Although it’s stressful to get slapped with an expensive bill after an unexpected medical emergency, there are ways to handle it without busting your budget. Try out these three tips above, and if all else fails, research your options for bad credit instalment loans.
