Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 7, 1994 TAG: 9408090008
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By LAURA WILLIAMSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
About half of them are stuffed full of unpaid medical bills - thousands upon thousands of dollars worth. Bills from Community, Roanoke Memorial and Lewis-Gale hospitals. Bills from local surgeons and medical doctors. Bills from anasthesiologists.
On any given day, judgments against the people who can't pay these bills fill the docket. Their stories unfold in courtroom number four - when they show up to tell them.
Few do.
"Out of 100 cases that go to court, 10 might show up to talk and set up a payment plan," said Lela Brown, assistant legal accounts manager for Roanoke Memorial Hospital. "Out of those, seven won't make the first payment. Two out of those three [remaining] will make the first payment and stop.
"Only one will make the full payments."
Many can't pay. They eventually move across the street into federal bankruptcy court, where a significant portion of the roughly 5,000 cases filed each year are the result of unpaid medical bills.
"That's one of the leading causes," Assistant U.S. Trustee Thomas Kennedy said.
His office sets up meetings between creditors and the people who have failed to pay their bills. Often, he said, the creditors don't bother to come because they know there's no money there for them to collect.
"It's throwing good money after bad," he said.
It's also unavoidable under the current health care system, said Henry Woodward, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society in Roanoke. He estimates that 95 percent of the bankruptcy cases he handles are caused by medical bills.
"For people who have no insurance, bankruptcy is a part of the medical care system," he said.
Few people realize, he added, how significant an impact it would have on local and federal courts if Congress passed a bill that guaranteed health care for all Americans.
"It would change the face of the judiciary in Virginia if there were meaningful health care reform," he said.
|By LAURA WILLIAMSON| |STAFF WRITER|
Thick legal folders with bright pink labels fill the shelves in the civil division of Roanoke's General District Court. Twenty-three thousand of them are new this year.
About half of them are stuffed full of unpaid medical bills - thousands upon thousands of dollars worth. Bills from Community, Roanoke Memorial and Lewis-Gale hospitals. Bills from local surgeons and medical doctors. Bills from anasthesiologists.
On any given day, judgments against the people who can't pay these bills fill the docket. Their stories unfold in courtroom number four - when they show up to tell them.
Few do.
"Out of 100 cases that go to court, 10 might show up to talk and set up a payment plan," said Lela Brown, assistant legal accounts manager for Roanoke Memorial Hospital. "Out of those, seven won't make the first payment. Two out of those three [remaining] will make the first payment and stop.
"Only one will make the full payments."
Many can't pay. They eventually move across the street into federal bankruptcy court, where a significant portion of the roughly 5,000 cases filed each year are the result of unpaid medical bills.
"That's one of the leading causes," Assistant U.S. Trustee Thomas Kennedy said.
His office sets up meetings between creditors and the people who have failed to pay their bills. Often, he said, the creditors don't bother to come because they know there's no money there for them to collect.
"It's throwing good money after bad," he said.
It's also unavoidable under the current health care system, said Henry Woodward, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society in Roanoke. He estimates that 95 percent of the bankruptcy cases he handles are caused by medical bills.
"For people who have no insurance, bankruptcy is a part of the medical care system," he said.
Few people realize, he added, how significant an impact it would have on local and federal courts if Congress passed a bill that guaranteed health care for all Americans.
"It would change the face of the judiciary in Virginia if there were meaningful health care reform," he said.
by CNB