What is the statute of limitations on a hospital bill. My wife was treated about 2 years ago (Feb. 2007) at a local hospital which was not on the list of ‘approved hospitals’ for my insurance company.
The resulting bill was paid at the 70% rate by my insurance company. I have always expected a bill from the hospital in question but have received none. Nor have I attempted to contact them. The difference (which was not paid) was nearly $2000.00.
Do hospitals normally just write this off? I have been laying low, just waiting for the statute of limitations to expire but I have no idea how long that is. I live in California.
I won’t hold anyone liable, just kind of want an estimate.
According to this site, 4 years.
That was fast, thanks. 
I have to wait another two years.
They will probably let you pay it off over 1 year with no interest if you want to. You are lucky they have not turned it over to a collection agency which impacts your credit rating. Normally it goes to collection after 90 days so they must be slack.
Many hospitals have donated funds for patients that “fall between,” as in uninsured/underinsured people with income that precludes medicad etc.
Often, it just gets paid. I’m not saying your bill has been taken care of, but it does happen.
That’s probably true. A few other thoughts:
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Have you moved? The first attempt by many collection agencies is to send you a letter, or perhaps try and contact you by phone. This might have already happened and you just didn’t know it.
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$2000 is just above the limit whereby most collections agencies will get serious. Meaning, they might pull a credit bureau report or check an asset list (like property deeds) to see if it’s worthwhile to sue you. But that takes time and is expensive for them, so they want to be sure it’s worth it before they get started. Once bills get below $1000 or so most don’t bother with this. For hospital bills the threshold might be higher, since hospital bills are known to be vulnerable to ‘talking down’ due to patient disputes.
And many hospitals and collections agencies don’t want the liability that comes with proactively impacting your credit report. The FCRA states that (1) if they are going to fool around with your credit report, they (2) must insure they are doing it accurately.
So if you chose to challenge/dispute the mark on your report they must have all sorts of tight procedures in place to manage your disputes, take the blemish off the report quickly, etc. Most hospitals and collection agencies don’t want to bother with that, since they can get counter-sued or hassled by the gubmint if they screw up. They’d rather just use empty threats about credit reports.
Bottom line…as the poster stated above, it could be anywhere in some loop at the moment - either at the hospital itself or at a collection agency. And it’s probably just at/above the threshold whereby it’s worthwhile to try and track you down. If you don’t want to pay the bill voluntarily, it might be a good idea to check your credit report now and then, and roll the dice that it’s gone for good.
I had a Dr. not bill the insurance so it never got paid. They sent a bill to my old address so I never got the bill. They turned it over to a collection agency who found my new address quickly. I called the Dr. and they were very upset about their mistakes and just wrote off the whole bill which was only around $150.