Knowing Your Rights & Crushing Medical Bills w/ Jared Walker #1115
How to Money
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 3.2K Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2026
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Every year, patients are billed and stuck with $14 billion in medical debt that should be wiped out under existing hospital financial assistance rules. This debt isn’t inevitable, it’s unnecessary! Given the fact that medical debt is the number one cause of bankruptcy and a huge source of stress for families, is it a step too far to say that there is a medical debt crisis in America? We don’t think so and our guest today is doing something about it. Jared Walker is the founder of DollarFor, an organization helping people crush hospital bills they don’t legally owe. Since 2012, DollarFor has helped eliminate more than $125 million in medical debt nationwide. Some of the topics covered today:
- The unnecessary strain of medical bills that many are not obligated to pay
- Simply letting others know about “charity care” could drastically help their situation
- Taking your time to negotiate bc medical bills don’t impact your credit score for a year
- Hospitals often do not inform patients about available financial assistance programs
- Medical debt impacting personal possibilities and economic progress
- Avoiding products like Care Credit which sound nice but are just credit cards in disguise
- And much more!
Want more How To Money in your life? Here are some additional ways to get ahead with your personal finances:
- Dollar For: You must check out the resources and tools at DollarFor.org if you are staring down a medical bill because there’s a good chance you can get it waived! Health Care Bluebook was also mentioned but be sure and look into Jared’s organization.
- Credit card perks: Check out our favorite credit cards that we use to maximize rewards and optimize our spending.
- Money Gears: knowing what to do with your money is crucial to your personal finance journey.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.3 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:04.1 | Welcome to How to Money. |
| 0:05.7 | I'm Joel. |
| 0:06.1 | And today I'm discussing knowing your rights and crushing your medical bills with Jared Walker. |
| 0:36.6 | Thank you. All right. So there are millions of Americans declaring bankruptcy or stuff on payment plans. |
| 0:38.9 | For bills, they never should have had to pay. |
| 0:44.0 | That's actually a line that's a quote from my guest today. And it perfectly sums up the medical debt crisis, overused term, but in this case it fits that we're facing right now in America. |
| 0:49.5 | And medical debt is the number one cause of bankruptcy. It's a huge source of stress for individuals and |
| 0:55.7 | families across the country. Here's the part that really guts me and gets me every time I see |
| 1:01.5 | the statistic. Every year, patients are billed $14 billion in medical debt. This should have been |
| 1:08.4 | wiped out under existing hospital finance assistance rules. |
| 1:12.2 | This debt is not inevitable either, right? It's just unnecessary in a lot of ways. And so that's why |
| 1:17.4 | I'm thrilled to have Jared Walker here. He's the founder of Dollar 4. It's an organization |
| 1:21.4 | helping people crush hospital bills that they don't legally owe. And so since 2012, $1.204 has helped eliminate more than $125 million |
| 1:30.1 | in medical debt nationwide. They're making a big difference in something where folks need a lot |
| 1:36.7 | of help. So, Jared, thanks so much for joining me today on the show. Thank you so much for having me. |
| 1:40.5 | I appreciate it. Of course. Yeah. So first question, ask everybody who joins me is, |
| 1:46.0 | what do you like to splurge on? Because, you know, while you're doing smart stuff with your money, |
| 1:49.0 | you still got to have an outlet in the here and now, right? So mine's craft beer. What's your |
| 1:53.2 | craft beer equivalent? The splurge for my wife and I is hosting. We like to have people over. We like |
| 1:59.6 | to make dinner. We like to host, have a meal with |
... |
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