Does a debt collector have to provide you with itemized copies of your bill?
Question Details:
Debt collector has been calling me for the past 4 weeks regarding an unpaid medical bill from a 1 1/2 years ago. I was never sent a bill from the hospital in all this time. Insurance information was given but hospital never sent a bill to them either and, shortly after, went bankrupt and closed. Outstanding bills were sold to 3rd party collector, who is calling us now. I've asked them to provide the original itemized hospital bill so I can submit it to our insurance company but they say they don't have to. They just demand an immediate credit card payment over the phone.
Third party debt purchasers are debt collectiors and have to send you proof of debt. Otherwise, they have violated the Federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and can be sued. You have leverage on the bill. Suggest you contact a consumer attorney and your bankruptcy attorney for advise.
Cases like this can be difficult. You did receive the services, but your sense that it isn't fair to ask you to pay the entire bill, when you had insurance coverage that wasn't used by the hospital, isn't off base.
Under the law, a person who has been injured by another, whether physically or in a case like this where it's an unpaid bill, has a duty to "mitigate damages," which means doing what the injured party can do to keep the damage to a minimum. A simple example is a landlord who has a tenant move out in mid-lease, has to look for another tenant, not just sit back and sue the tenant for the rest of the rent due for the remaining months. I think it could be argued, here, that the hospital failed to do that, and should not recover more than you would have had to pay beyond your insurance coverage.
There might be another argument as well: usually, what a hospital bills for any given services, to the uninsured, is a lot higher than what is billed to an insurance company, because the insurance company has a contract with the hospital for lower rates. You, as an insured, are what is called a "third party beneficiary" of that contract, and you might be able to assert that this contract has been breached by the hospital.
An attorney can make these arguments effectively; the second one, in particular, is probably beyond do-it-yourself territory.
