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How San Diego hospitals bend will reduce charges on your bill
This article came into my hands just in time for me to activate my own agenda to drive down my bill. I literally have the same situation. The hospital didn't want to admit that AB774 was even an option. Nearly everyone on the billing staff said they never heard of it. After having them read their own bill, asking for an audit, and writing letters to the billing department, my local legislators and the like, they have offered me a substantial cut in price, nearly 66 percent. But I'm not going to stop there and agree. I still will have trouble covering it and paying my monthly bills. I'm now negotiating the rate even lower, hopefully down to 85 percent of their inflated cost and then I will write a check and call it a day. Don't let hospitals push you around. It's illegal to send you to debt collectors when you are eligible for the AB774 FAIR PRICE discount. The hospital I'm dealing with kept sending me to apply for medicare or CMS. But they never offered a FAIR PRICING discount which states that in nearly invisible ink on the back of the bill. The care was excellent at the hospital but the billing people are monsters. Why didn't they offer this discount from the gate and I would have been paying it off by now...?— July 22, 2010 5:39 p.m.