petitefrancaise

"She's being chased by a company in Switzerland who are an international debt collector"

Giantaxe

Not if it was an emergency, which a hospitalization on vacation may well have been.

Steffys79

Thanks everyone. She split her head open and all the insurance has said is that it has paid what they think is fair! She has Medical conditions and went with a specialist insurance company so that she wouldn't have any issues whilst abroad. I have auggeated she goes back to the insurer as well

Rete

I suppose therein lies the problem and was my first thought on reading your post. What the [foreign] insurance company thinks is fair and what is normally billed for the same procedure in the US I imagine will differ greatly.

Your friends needs to follow the advice above and have the insurance intervene with the debt collection agency. They will settle for a percentage of the amount she is being chased for as their aim to collect something on the debt.

Pulaski

I suspect that the problem is that the insurer has an idea what "reasonable" is (allowing for inflated medical costs in the US) for any (most) procedures, meaning you can't claim $500,000 for a septic ingrown toenail just because you have $10 million of insurance coverage.

While it would be useful to know why the insurer didn't pay the full bill, it would also be useful to know if the hospital billed a customary amount for someone with insurance, or a larger "gross" amount that is usually discounted for payment by an insurance company?

SanDiegogirl

Get itemised bills from the hospital.

Rete

Being that she split her head open as the OP stated, I imagine there were tests to see what internal injuries there were, i.e. bleeding on the brain, concussion. Those tests are very expensive, i.e. MRI, Catscans. If the skull itself was actually cracked, what was needed to repair the injury. Did she need to remain in the hospital overnight to assess her condition, etc. The cost she incurred for this injury actually sounds quite reasonable to me. Was she taken to the hospital via ambulance and is that part of the charge?

Would be interesting to discover how the injury occurred and if it were the result of a fall on someone's property (personal or commercial), why their homeowner's/property insurance was not made to pay part if not all of the bill in addition to her travel insurance.

kodokan

When we lived in Switzerland and therefore had Swiss health insurance, it covered us for overseas emergencies. But for the US, it carefully specified that the coverage was capped at what the same procedure would cost in CH.

Twinkle0927

Some policies limit what they pay if they feel the condition or injury is "self-inflicted" (e.g. because the person was intoxicated or doing something dangerous without the proper equipment such as riding a bicycle with no helmet).

scrubbedexpat099

When I was in the business 5m was normal, 10m was available and that was a very long time ago, so 10m seems very possible.

Travel involving the US used to be roughly double the premium.

No Insurer pays the number that a Hospital charges, not the way the US system works.

Exactly what happened in this case when the information is second hand and confusing I would not like to speculate.