The bill looked like BS. So she took it to small claims court.

An Arm and a Leg

Society & Culture, Medicine, Health, Health & Fitness, Documentary

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 9 February 2023

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

“I sued a hospital in small claims court and lost — here’s what I learned.” That was the subject line for an email we got from listener Lauren Slemenda.

She wrote: “I feel like I won” — and we knew we needed to talk with her.

She wants to encourage more people to try taking providers to court over unfair bills.

“If everybody that they screw stands up,” she says, “They can't afford to pay a lawyer to defend against all of those [cases].”

It’s an interesting idea for sure — What if more people use small claims court to fight messed-up medical bills? Like, a lot more people? — and we’ll be exploring it in the coming months.

Meanwhile, Lauren’s story has lessons for all of us. For instance, even though she lost her case, she doesn’t expect to pay a cent.

Here’s a transcript of the episode.

More helpful resources

Want to try some of Lauren’s tactics?

Looking up billing codes: The latest First Aid Kit newsletter is all about fact-checking medical bills and includes a section about examining billing codes. We'll go deeper on those codes in the next installment.

Dealing with debt collectors: We discussed knowing your rights when dealing with debt collectors with a couple of experts in this very-fun episode.

Lauren got her dealing-with-debt-collectors playbook from journalist and friend-of-the-show Marshall Allen. His book, Never Pay the First Bill, includes a template of a letter you can send to a debt collector, challenging them to document their claim.

Exploring small claims court: We first got tipped off to this aggressive approach in a story we re-played recently: Can They Freaking Do That?!?

... and followed up with the story of Jeffrey Fox, who successfully used small claims court to force a big hospital to refund a $2,000 charge. David vs. Goliath.

Send your stories and questions. Or call 724 ARM-N-LEG.

And of course we’d love for you to support this show.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	My name is Lauren Slomenda. I live in Reno, Nevada. I work in higher education. That's my
0:06.0	full-time gig. And I probably should have been a lawyer.
0:12.7	Lauren sent me a note a few months ago. With the subject heading, I sued a hospital in small
0:16.8	claims court and lost. Here's what I learned. It ended. I technically lost, but I feel like I won.
0:24.0	I'm just kind of a bulldog, especially when I feel like big organizations with a lot of power
0:28.6	are taking advantage of people, especially people that I care about. I just get really fired up
0:35.5	and I'm not afraid of a little conflict. If you wanted to encourage more people, maybe
0:41.0	a lot more people to give this a try. I was like, let's definitely talk.
0:52.2	This is an arm and a leg. I show about why healthcare costs a freaking month and what we can maybe
0:56.7	do about it. I'm Dan Weissman. I'm a reporter. I like a challenge. So our job on this show is to
1:02.0	take one of the most enraging, terrifying, depressing parts of American life and bring you something
1:07.3	entertaining, empowering, and useful. Lauren says studying medical bills has become kind of a hobby.
1:16.7	Something she traces back to childhood. Her dad passed away when she was eight. There wasn't a lot
1:23.2	of money. My mom is a person who will call someone and argue over a penny. I just remember her
1:28.5	spending hours on the phone arguing with insurance companies and retrospect. I'm realizing
1:35.6	how difficult that must have been, especially because my brother has a couple disabilities.
1:41.2	And before Obamacare, those are all pre-existing conditions, so no one wanted to cover him.
1:46.8	Yeah. Lauren's primed for a good fight, but it's not like he went right to court the first time she
1:51.6	got a messed up medical bill. Actually, earlier that same year, I had like a bogus bill from this
1:56.5	same hospital group that I just like didn't try as hard to fight, but when they sent me another one,
2:02.4	I was like, you guys gotta be kidding me. Absolutely not. So I just fought them tooth and nail on it.
2:11.5	And I think it's worth hearing what Lauren's like when she's not fighting tooth and nail. The
	...

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