Hello, I am new here. This was an emergency room visit hospital bill. At the time, I was unemployed and needed high blood pressure med. I had applied for State Local Hospitalization which is a form of state aid to assist those who don't have insurance. SLH does not cover the doctor's fees just the hospital charges. I disputed this bill once before and now they have sent a letter asking for a settlement. I am in the process of applying for a mortgage loan and I am a vet. I was told by hearsay that the vet doesn't look at medical bills especially one that is 5 years old. Should I respond? I remember a homebuyers class which said if you respond they can start the process all over with the 7 years. This is not on my credit bureau. Thank you.
If it's not showing up on any of your credit reports, then it's not affecting your credit scores and shouldn't impact your ability to get approved for a mortgage. I would hold off on responding until you lock down your mortgage. If it does pop up on your credit reports before that happens, then you're going to need to deal with it.
I want to make sure that I understand the situation completely. You went into the hospital in 2007, applied for state/local hospital coverage, which paid for the hospital bill, but not the doctor's charges portion of the hospital bill. The CA contacted you previously, you sent a dispute. (Did they provide you the validation - i.e. copies of the doctor's charges for the hospital bill?) Now the CA has contacted you to try to settle the account. First question that I can answer, the 7 year period for credit bureau reporting begins and end with the date of delinquency, so the 7 year period would always coincide with the time the medical services were rendered, since they are typically due payable at that time. There are ways that collectors could 're-age' accounts to make them re-appear on your credit report, but they need to report the original date of delinquency, and it can only be reported for that 7 year period starting with that date. What used to happen routinely, was that a CA would report the DATE OPEN, and the CRA would use the DATE OPEN to gauge the 7 year period, under the current FCRA, the 7 years is specifically set to the DoFD.
no, in answer to your question. I am sorry; I responded before I read. They sent me what look like a form generated from the hospital. I am a former worker who worked in a hospital billing office and it did not answer my question so I did not respond.
If the 'validation' that you get, doesn't answer your questions, the best option is to respond, immediately, stating why the 'validation' that they provided doesn't in fact answer your questions. Unless you tell them otherwise, from the time that they obtained, and mailed the 'validation', they assume that the 'validation' that they provided was sufficient to answer your questions. Until they are informed otherwise, they can continue to operate under that assumption. Responding to the 'validation' by telling them why it's insufficient shouldn't result in any activity that is detrimental to you. Most of the times that I've sent a "Excuse me, but that isn't anywhere close to providing anything close to an answer to my dispute." letter, the CA sends a letter telling me that they're sending the account back to the OC, because then the OC can try to research the dispute, and they're not playing monkey in the middle.
