Here's the dirty little secret: in the kafkaesque industry that is 21st century medicine, a bill is like an offer to pay. "$800 is what we think you owe us," i

Here's the dirty little secret: in the kafkaesque industry that is 21st century medicine, a bill is like an offer to pay. "$800 is what we think you owe us," isn't even quite the right explanation. It's more like, "we think you're an $800 sucker who will cough up that number because it appears on this official-looking piece of paper." And if you call one of them up (any of them: doctor, insurance, hospital, whatever) they're going to either: a) tell you to talk to one of the other two, or b) exactly what they think you need to hear so that they maximize their conversion rate, i.e. so that you send in your real money for their fake bill. Did you put down your signature on a piece of paper stating to the effect that you owed them $800? Do they have in writing your acknowledgement that you supposedly owe them $800? No? Then why are you acting like it? Collection is their problem, and right now they're playing a psychological trick on you because on works on people like you. patio11 has some good comments on collections. I'm not going to dredge them up but anyone sufficiently interested can do so.