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University of Virginia Health Systems (UVA) has said that it will wipe out tens of thousands of lawsuits against patients who owe money for unpaid bills, after suing patients for decades.
UVA said on Monday that it would cancel a massive backlog of court judgements and liens that had come from the lawsuits, which dated back to the 1990s, reports KHN.
The move is expected to help tens of thousands of families, with some owing hundreds of thousands of dollars in hospital bills. To collect payment for unpaid bills, UVA and other hospital systems seize wages and home equity from former patients.
“This is very significant and a much-needed and overdue step,” Erin Fuse Brown, a law professor at Georgia State University who studies hospital billing, told KHN. “I don’t know if I’ve heard of that [lien abolition] happening anywhere else.”
Health care finance scholars told KHN that the move is more generous than anything offered by most other hospital systems.
Doris Hutchison, who owed UVA $39,000 for a lien left by a relative on her mother’s home, told KHN that she was excited to learn the judgement would be cancelled and she would use the money to help pay for her grandchildren’s education.
University of Virginia Health Chief Financial Officer Douglas Lischke told KHN that UVA would release all liens and judgments filed against all households making less than 400 percent of federal poverty guidelines, or $106,000 for a family of four.
“This is a proud moment for us. We want our financial care to be as good as our clinical care,” he said.
UVA also announced that it would allow university students with healthcare debt to enroll in the school and complete their education.
Recently, UVA’s sister health care system VCU Health announced that it would stop suing patients altogether and it was abolishing all old judgments and liens. Although UVA’s decision doesn’t go quite as far, Jenifer Bosco, an attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, said it was “many steps” in the right direction.
“There is always more that could be done. But providing assistance to families with income of up to 400 percent of the poverty level is a great step.”
Medical bills have long been at the forefront of legal change. In December 2020, after years of debate, Congress banned surprise medical bills as part of its $900 billion stimulus package. However, while patients are now offered protection from unexpectedly incurring high costs due to out-of-network medical treatment, ground ambulances are not included in the surprise billing ban.
Rather, the measure focuses on protecting patients who believe they’re covered by their insurance but end up receiving bills from out-of-network doctors and specialists who were involved with their treatment.
Have you ever had an unexpectedly high medical bill? Did you manage to pay it off? Let us know in the comments section!
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One thought on University of Virginia Health to Help Tens of Thousands of Families by Wiping Out Old Lawsuits
Yes I live in missouri the Bill’s where due to mental behavioral breaks(all good now :) I shouldn’t actually have anything on my credit which I’m unsure what is but I’d say not good enough to get loans any bill I’ve ever owed in my life are medical bills due to no insurance