Extremism of absurd medical bills - These Health Centers Are Supposed to Make Care Affordable. One Has Sued Patients for

These Health Centers Are Supposed to Make Care Affordable. One Has Sued Patients for as Little as $59 in Unpaid Bills.

This past June, Ashley Voss-Barnes received a court summons in the mail.

PrairieStar Health Center, a nonprofit community health center in south-central Kansas, was suing her for $675 and her wife for $732 in unpaid medical bills. Voss-Barnes knew the clinic received federal funding to make preventive health care accessible in a region where many families, including her own, needed financial help.

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Though experts and leaders of other health centers say the centers have ample freedom to decide what “reasonable” means — and whether to pursue debt through collections agencies and the courts — Anderson said the manner in which PrairieStar collects debts is mandated by the law.

But experts on community health center finances said that federal law does not require the centers to send patients to collections. “There’s no law that says you have to garnish wages or that you have to go after someone through collections,” said Ray Jorgensen, a health care billing consultant who said he has worked with hundreds of community health centers over about 30 years. “I would say that’s an anomaly. That’s not the norm.”

https://www.propublica.org/article/federally-qualified-health-centers-unpaid-bills-lawsuits