We had an international PhD student visiting our lab to do research this past semester. She had to go to urgent care when she was sick in February.
Skip to May… one day I’d asked her how her weekend went and she said it was terrible because she found a piece of mail that had gotten mixed up with her roommate’s mail, and she was nearly “a month late” on paying the medical bill. She was panicking a bit about how she was going to come up with a few hundred dollars quickly, and was very worried about it being “late” (it was sent in April).
I asked her a few questions and realized that she was, of course, just clueless about how medical billing in the US works. I told her “All these numbers are not real: the due dates, the money, they’re just made up. Do NOT pay that bill right now”. I explained the whole dealio to her and she was relieved but baffled. So the next day an American lab member took her to the clinic and helped her negotiate a huge price reduction, and coordinated getting her records to the insurance company to see if they’d pay more of it. She was SO relieved and happy, and also amazed at how messed up things are here.