After her boyfriend was sent to the ER, a girlfriend pulled all the stops to get a $5,000 hospital bill reduced to $26. But after all the hard work of sending numerous emails, her boyfriend got mad at her because he thought she took it too far.
A concerned girlfriend pulled all the stops to reduce a high medical bill after her boyfriend was sent to the ER for an accident he had suffered.
The girlfriend took it to Reddit to explain all the steps she had to take to write off her boyfriend’s medical bill. But at the end of it all, she ended up being the bad guy in her boyfriend’s eyes.
When the girlfriend realized they had been billed $5,000 after insurance, she knew it would mean sacrificing their holidays, but she also believed it was something that could be disputed.
So she asked her boyfriend if she could try to reduce the bill, and he gave her the go-ahead to handle the billing dispute and access his medical records.
How Did the Girlfriend Get the Medical Bill Reduced?
The determined girlfriend started by asking for an itemized bill to compare all the billing codes to their fair prices. From there, she went on to call the billing department to dispute the costs, but she was referred to the administration office.
After spending a lot of time dealing with the call center and needing the right person to help dispute the bill, she decided to take it up a notch.
The girl did a deep dive on LinkedIn and searched for the hospital’s board of directors and upper management. She gathered about 30 emails, and each day, she would spend 15 minutes drafting a long email explaining that her “client” had been charged seven times more than the average rate.
A woman on the laptop | Source: Shutterstock
She also detailed that the billing and customer care department had not been helpful, which was why she escalated the issue. The girlfriend wrote emails to people at a director level and copied everyone from the board of directors, along with a few investors.
After she laid out all the reasons she had been overcharged and the unsatisfactory service she had received from the billing department, the bill was reduced from a whopping $5,000 to $26.
The girlfriend was proud that her hard work had paid off and was excited to tell her boyfriend the good news. “I told my boyfriend the good news, and he was at first overjoyed and blown away,” she said. The boyfriend even called her a “Christmas miracle.”
He then asked how she pulled it all off, and the girlfriend said all it took was sending out a few emails, which the boyfriend asked to see. When he found himself scrolling through approximately 60 emails, his mind changed. The girlfriend wrote:
“He told me I went way too far, he was expecting me to dispute through their billing department or something normal and reasonable like that, not internet stalk every single manager and board member and investor and harass them into dropping the bill.”
He did not think disputing the bill would take her “stalking” the managers on the internet. However, the girlfriend was frustrated by his reaction because she had just saved them $5,000 and afforded them a nice holiday. Now, she wondered if she took it too far and turned to Reddit users for advice.
What Did Readers Have to Say?
The immediate response from readers was that the girlfriend was a hero and thought she should use her skills to become a professional advocate.
Readers thought the boyfriend was ungrateful and uninformed about how much work it took to challenge a large bill, especially when doctors, insurance, and the hospital staff were unwilling to help.
The fact that the girlfriend was able to clear almost the entire bill and have her boyfriend mad at her for going the extra mile was confusing for many readers. People who knew the difficulty of fighting bills wanted the girlfriend to give them tips to fight their outstanding accounts.
