Suing patients for unpaid bills

When the coronavirus arrived in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered state-run hospitals to stop suing patients over unpaid medical bills. Almost every major private hospital in the state voluntarily followed suit, except Northwell Health, the state’s largest health system.

My colleague Brian Rosenthal, an investigative reporter, found that the nonprofit health system, which operates 23 hospitals, sued more than 2,500 patients last year, for an average bill of $1,700, plus large interest payments. The flurry of lawsuits hit teachers, construction workers, grocery store employees and others at a time of widespread unemployment.

Across the state, Brian found that around 50 hospitals have sued about 5,000 patients since March, but Northwell stands out for its aggressive number of lawsuits and because of its connections to Mr. Cuomo. Northwell’s chief executive officer, Michael Dowling, has been a close friend to Mr. Cuomo for more than three decades and has served as the governor’s closest ally in the hospital industry during the pandemic.

Medical debt lawsuits are becoming more common across the country, as health care costs have risen and insurance companies push more of the financial burden onto patients. These cases are rarely contested in court, and they usually lead to default judgments that allow hospitals to garnish wages and freeze accounts to extract money, sometimes without the patient’s knowledge.
The New York Times