Is accident and emergency service not free in the USA? If I had an accident, for example cut my arm open on a rock, and had to go to hospital, would I have to pay?

I kept some medical debt around for about 10 years and it never went away on my score. In reality they had incorrectly charged me by thousands of dollars. No one believed me until it finally landed at this small debt collection agency who traced it back at my urging. It was an error and I settled the bill after a decade for about. I was actually about to just pay it so my score would recover since I was about to buy a house, too since I finally had received a promotion that would allow me to do so. I've been a homeowner with a badass rate and used the money I saved on the fake debt to buy myself a 4k projector as a housewarming gift for myself. I have no idea why that little debt collection agency was willing to do the digging when I submitted my case when it has fallen in deaf ears for years, but I have them to thank whenever I watch Netflix on a 10 foot screen.

I've since learned that it most likely stuck around past 7 years for one of two reasons: It either reset as it passed from one collection agency to the next OR, I triggered it to reset by engaging with the debt collection process, which acknowledged that I owed the debt (even by fighting to say I didn't owe the debt).

/r/NoStupidQuestions Thread Parent