It was revealed in recent news that in Michigan at some doctor's offices, patients will need to present and use their credit cards before they can obtain any medical care. An internet based medical payment program that is fairly new allows medical providers to secure a credit card before medical help will be provided.
Touting the fact that it is a way of making sure medical providers get paid while keeping administrative costs down, the company has been around since 2008. It works like this: upon arriving at their doctors office, patients are told by their medical care provider what the maximum amount a particular procedure will most likely cost. The patient slides their credit card, gets the procedure done, and strolls out of the office with a receipt and a detailed slip of services provided.
After that has happened the doctor will bill the patient's insurance company. It will tell the doctor how much of the work is covered; the balance left over is charged on the card. If a deductible hasn't been met, then the whole price of the procedure is charged.
With the increasing health care costs, more pressure has is being put on patients to pay their bills in the form of higher deductibles, out of pocket expenses and unpaid bills. With this stress that is increasing, unpaid and delinquent bills have become big issues for medical doctors.
Patient's health care payments are now over three hundred billion dollars a year, and that number is supposed to balloon up to twice that number by 2015. From this number, fifty to sixty billion dollars of current health care debts go unpaid. The program has been shown to reduce delinquent accounts by up to eighty percent.
But some analysts remain skeptical. The issue of patients who don't pay off their balance each month hasn't yet been resolved, much less the issue of a patient not having a credit card.
Mallory Megan is employed by a debt collection agency. She also composes articles on business and finance, consumer spending and collection agencies.
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