Visitor's Insurance Claim for Hospital Expenses

[mani08]

My mother-in-law is currently visiting US from India. Three days after she came here, she fell down and broke her femur bone. She had to undergo surgery and be hospitalized for a week. We had taken Visitor's Insurance from IMG. According to them, they would pay only $3300 for the surgical expenses and $1400/day for hospital stay. I am sure the total amount to pay will be significantly more than that. Will IMG negotiate the payment amount on behalf of the patient? Does anyone know if the payment with hospital be negotiated?

Thanks for any input.

[insubuy]

There are no network negotiated fees in Visitors Care Insurance, as it is a fixed coverage plan.

You will end up paying significant amount of expenses out of your pocket, all the difference beyond the fixed amount. That is how the fixed coverage plan works. That is the kind of plan you chose.

For much better coverage, you should always buy the comprehensive coverage, available from the same company, such as Patriot America or Protection America. We always recommend everyone to always buy comprehensive plans only. However, many people still end up buying fixed coverage plans simply because they are cheap. What you pay is what you get. They don't realize this (or simply refuse to accept the facts) until they have to make a claim.

How much covered in Visitors Care plan is mentioned at https://www.insubuy.com/visitors-car...cal-insurance/

Difference between fixed and comprehensive plans:

https://www.insubuy.com/visitors-insurance/

Comprehensive plans:
Atlas America: https://www.insubuy.com/atlasamerica-insurance/

I hope it clarifies everything.

If you have any additional questions, please feel free to post them here, or contact us at any time.

[mani08]

Narendra

Thanks for the info. As you mentioned, the surgery was an expensive one and we are on the hook for significant amount to be paid. However, has anyone had any luck negotiating the payment with hospitals in such cases? I was told by someone that parents can claim no income and can appeal to the hospital for a reduction in the payment. Does that really work?

[insubuy]

Unfortunately, most people seek our advice up to this point and therefore are in our contact up to this point. After that, they deal with the hospital bills on their own and never bother to report back for the benefit of others.

However, based on whatever I know, hospital may be able to negotiate a little bit in case you didn't have the insurance. But it is difficult to make general statement for all hospitals across the country.

Most likely, you sponsored your mother-in-law to come to this country. Therefore, most hospitals would tie your income with that of patient's and would want to collect money from you. Think about this way honestly, you are not the first one who took your visiting mother-in-law to the hospital and ran into big bills that you need to pay out of your pocket. They already had many such patients and therefore most of them are already smart and alert.

If they were to forfeit the bills for every visitor because they had low/no income, they would be out of business and so would be we, as no one would buy the insurance. However, it does not work like that. Hosptials are running business for profit. You will have to pay the bills yourself. You might not know this, but there were well over 1 million bankruptcies filed last year alone because people being unable to pay medical bills.

I am sorry that my answer may not make you feel good, but I am just stating the realities. Again, I recommend everyone to buy only the comprehensive coverage plans from US companies to avoid such situations.