Medical Bill Errors: Fighting Mistakes

Expensive mistakes on medical bills are hard for most of us to detect, because the bills are written in a mysterious language that we don't speak.

But eight out of 10 medical bills have mistakes on them, according to Medical Billing Advocates of America.

What if you could hire somebody to translate your bills and then do battle for you?

Turns out, you can. And it might not even cost you anything.

Finding the Mistakes and Fighting Back

Artist Cynthia Kulp thought being diagnosed with breast cancer was the worst thing that could happen to her. But, then, the hospital where she received her breast cancer treatment overcharged her.

"To have to fight a hospital going through cancer treatment, overcharging me, they have to be the lowest of the low," Kulp said.

Before her lumpectomy, she said, the hospital told her the operation would cost $5,000. Instead, she got a bill for $12,700, right in the middle of her course of chemotherapy.

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"You can barely function, you can barely get out of bed," she said. "How can you fight hospitals?"

So she hired Holly Wallack, a medical billing advocate, to help. Wallack found all kinds of errors on Kulp's bill, such as:

Mismatches. These are drugs that appeared on the medical bill, even though they weren't listed in the medical records.

Double charges. The hospital charged Kulp for two "first" hours in the recovery room. So Wallack asked, "How many 'first' hours do you get? Last I heard, there was only one, then he was very happy to take that charge off."

Inflated charges. The hospital billed $192 for a postoperative support bra that Wallack found on the Internet for $19 -- a tenth of the cost.

"That was one morning in one operating room in one hospital in one little town in the country," she said. "If you extrapolate that out to what's going on every day, it's mind boggling."