How To Negotiate Your Medical Bills

This is new. From Smart Planet reported recently:

"Spiraling bills and a nasty recession have led to the launch of Medical Cost Advocate, a FREE service that aims to negotiate for you and cut your medical bills. Of course it’s not actually free. It’s only free if they fail to get your costs cut. If they do, they get their cut, just like a lawyer who sues the guy whose truck ran you over."

Disclaimer: I have not used the Medical Cost Advocate service, so I cannot speak to its effectiveness.

I performed several Internet searches and the lack of coverage about Medical Cost Advocate by the mainstream news media was startling. A few bloggers have reported about the service.

I briefly looked at the Medical Cost Advocate (MCA) Web site. Consumers have to sign up and submit their medical bills. Obviously, this make me ask who really is behind the Web site and how well they protect patients' sensitive personal information. The MCA site has an eTrust seal, which is a good first step.

The interview with MCA's CEO starts at about 1 minute and 10 seconds into the video:

If anyone has used Medical Cost Advocate, please share your experience below.

Comments

[A. M.]

March 2010 AARP recently "recommended" them in their bulletin under Save a Buck: Your Money. (pg. 23)

[Sofia Britts]

I haven't heard of that website before until now. Whenever there are unexpected medical bills, it's either I use tears to negotiate at least in terms of payment scheme or I apply for a fast cash advance to make it a priority. It's tougher if you have debts with a hospital or a clinic, so I make sure that medical bills are paid first.

[Rick Campbell]

while not a scam, they are a rip-off. they do not do what they say, get detailed hospital bills and examine them for improprieties. if you submit your insurance overview, they use that, call the hospital and ask how much if we can get this fool to pay now? duh! anyone can do that and the going rate, first try, is 20%. and they want 35% of this?