I used ACA policy to get over $1,000 in medical debt erased

• I got a $1,000 more medical bill than I expected, but I knew the ACA might be able to help.
• The ACA requires nonprofit hospitals to offer financial assistance programs to patients in need.
• I qualified for the plan (earn middle class income) and my bill was completely cleared.

Several years ago, my husband broke his hand in an unfortunate accident.

When his fingers started to swell purple, we rushed to the hospital. We had health insurance thanks to the Affordable Care Act, but our emergency co-pay was still pointless. We had to pay at least $500 for this visit.

Doctors decided the damage wouldn’t be treated with a splint, so they wrapped him in some bandages and braces and sent him on his way.

When we got the bill, it turned out there was a total of $1,000 in costs that wouldn’t be covered by insurance. $500 deductible plus an additional $500 in medical costs.

ACA’s little-known policy helped me get rid of our medical debt

After my initial panic, I researched the hospital’s financial aid policy. I’ve learned from my personal finance work that if a hospital is a nonprofit, it has to provide financial aid under the ACA—a benefit not many people are aware of.

We have been insured. And at the time, we were walking very close to the average household income. I wasn’t sure if we would qualify. The ACA does not have any specific guidelines on income and asset limits when it comes to these programs. The hospital is required to provide a program, and should He advertises his program to his patients, but how the program actually operates is entirely up to the institution itself, depending on state law. In Pennsylvania at the time, there weren’t any other rules a hospital had to follow.

When I researched the income limits, I breathed a sigh of relief. For a family our size, we can get 100% remission. But we have to work for it. We’ve had to collect all the W2s over the past several years. House expenses, such as rent, were taken into account in the equation and paperwork required as well. I collected them all, filled out a four-page form showing our entire financial picture, and sent it to the address listed.

About a month later, we received news that the debt had been 100% eliminated. Since then, I’ve used that same program in the California emergency room, specific doctors’ offices that were closely associated with a nonprofit hospital, and for a bout of bacteria that kept me in the emergency room overnight.

How to use the ACA Financial Aid Plan

You can also use these programs. First, make sure that the hospital you are visiting is a non-profit hospital. If they are, they are legally obligated to offer one of these programs and are legally required to advertise it to you.

Some hospitals are not doing well in this second part. If you don’t see a financial aid plan advertised, you can ask for information when it’s taken up. Or, when you get your bill, there should be a phone number listed somewhere on it that gives you more information about your financial aid policy.

If your hospital fails to do so, contact the billing department directly and ask explicitly about the financial assistance program. Try to do this within 30 days of your visit, as you don’t want to risk the bill falling into bundles.

Next, know that although there are no income limits set by the federal government, each hospital can write its own limits. This may discourage you, making you think that only people with low incomes or uninsured are eligible for these programs. But in every case I’ve seen in my personal experience, this could not be further from the truth.

Even as a secured family with a solid middle-income income, we have repeatedly qualified for a 100% amnesty across multiple programs in multiple states.

The ACA is a flawed compromise that isn’t enough to help the average American family deal with the huge costs of our health care system. But it’s also the only reason millions of Americans ever get insurance, and it offers unknown protections to patients in specific circumstances, as is the case with nonprofit hospital financial aid plans.