When Christine Wooden obtained a $12,000 invoice from Bristol Hospital, she thought it have to be a mistake. It was greater than she and her husband made in a month mixed.
“I’m freaking out,” mentioned Wooden, who lives in a 1,700-square-foot dwelling in Terryville, a village simply outdoors Bristol, Connecticut. “I don’t understand it.”
Wooden, 52, had weight reduction surgical procedure at Bristol Hospital in 2022, hoping it might assist together with her sleep apnea and the ache in her knees and again. Earlier than scheduling the process, she checked together with her insurer, she mentioned, and was advised the surgical procedure would value $5,000 out-of-pocket. She paid prematurely.
Greater than six months later, Bristol despatched Wooden one other invoice that pushed the price of her surgical procedure to greater than $17,000. Wooden mentioned she tried to dispute the cost. The hospital sued her.
“That’s ridiculous. I was told so many times by Aetna: ‘$5,000 out-of-pocket,’” Wooden mentioned. “I never would have had the surgery had I known it was going to cost almost 20 grand.”
Wooden is amongst greater than three dozen Connecticut sufferers the Connecticut Mirror and KFF Well being Information interviewed over the previous yr who have been sued by their hospital or doctor over unpaid payments.
The sufferers embody academics, small-business house owners, a postal employee, a retired nursing dwelling aide, a nurse, and a resort bellhop. Most had jobs and medical health insurance. Almost all mentioned they needed to pay what they owed.
Sufferers taken to courtroom described baffling payments, complicated well being plan guidelines, and irritating and fruitless phone calls to hospital billing places of work and well being insurers’ customer-service traces. Even once they tried to resolve their excellent payments, many mentioned they couldn’t get solutions.
Their experiences encapsulate breakdowns within the healthcare system that lure sufferers in debt. Medical insurance didn’t cowl look after causes they couldn’t perceive. A number of sufferers didn’t qualify for monetary help from suppliers, regardless of modest incomes. In the event that they dedicated to pay, sufferers have been hit with liens on their houses or curiosity funds and courtroom charges that piled new debt onto their medical payments.
The trade’s key gamers blame each other for a damaged system. Suppliers say insurers’ high-deductible plans saddle sufferers with huge payments even once they have protection. Insurers say hospitals elevate costs at charges that outpace inflation.
In the meantime, sufferers are caught with the fallout. In 2022, about 4 in 10 adults within the U.S. reported carrying medical or dental debt.
“It’s bad enough that I have bad health and have to pay mountains of medical bills,” mentioned Samantha Mantiera, whom Danbury Hospital sued in 2024 over $10,000 she mentioned she was erroneously charged. “Then to constantly be dealing with incorrect bills and then a lawsuit on top of it took me over the top.”
Mantiera mentioned she spent months attempting to clarify to the hospital after which a group company that her insurance coverage statements indicated she owed simply $260. She was sued anyway.
After Mantiera contested the lawsuit, Danbury Hospital withdrew it, courtroom data present.
Mantiera mentioned she and her husband now journey as much as an hour from their Brookfield, Connecticut, dwelling to keep away from hospitals owned by Danbury’s guardian firm, now known as Northwell Well being.
Kathy Holt, who leads the state Workplace of the Healthcare Advocate, mentioned that previously a number of a long time healthcare has solely gotten tougher for sufferers to navigate. The company fields hundreds of calls yearly from residents searching for assist with medical billing questions.
“I’ve talked to too many people who have just given up,” Holt mentioned. “The system has been made so hard for them, and I feel like it’s deliberate.”
‘They Would Not Talk to Me’
Debt assortment lawsuits towards sufferers have declined in Connecticut since 2019, a CT Mirror-KFF Well being Information evaluation of state courtroom data discovered. And courtroom data present most Connecticut hospital methods have stopped suing sufferers, together with the state’s two largest methods, Yale New Haven Well being and Hartford HealthCare.
Most hospitals stopped suing sufferers throughout the covid-19 pandemic as they reevaluated their assortment practices, mentioned Sarah Ginnetti, chief income cycle officer at UConn Well being. The system ceased lawsuits in 2022, data present.
“In some of those circumstances, it just felt misaligned with our mission as an organization,” Ginnetti mentioned. “For the small handful of cases that we might gain some type of legal victory, we really didn’t feel as though that would be our best path forward.”
Yale New Haven Well being and Hartford HealthCare wouldn’t focus on why they stopped suing sufferers, as a substitute issuing statements about their monetary help packages.
Scores of medical suppliers — together with doctor teams, dentists, and hospitals — have saved on suing, knowledge reveals. The CT Mirror-KFF Well being Information evaluation discovered greater than 1,500 healthcare-related debt instances filed in Connecticut courts in 2024.
This included lawsuits by Bristol Well being, an unbiased native well being system that features Bristol Hospital, and Nuvance Well being, a series of seven hospitals not too long ago acquired by Northwell Well being, a multibillion-dollar system based mostly in New York.
Nuvance hospitals filed over 4,000 assortment lawsuits from 2019 to 2024, data present. Over the 5 years, the well being system accounted for greater than 1 / 4 of the roughly 16,300 medical debt assortment lawsuits towards sufferers recognized in state courtroom data.
Hospital officers and different medical suppliers say they attempt to work with sufferers who’ve bother paying their payments. Nikki Schulz, chief income officer for Northwell’s Connecticut hospitals, mentioned in a press release that years in the past the system “eased” its assortment practices, resulting in a “precipitous decline” in medical debt referred to collections.
“We fundamentally retooled our approach to align with industry best practices,” Schulz mentioned. Information present the well being system sued about 200 sufferers in 2024, down from 2,200 in 2019.
Healthcare executives additionally say they’ve a duty to attempt to acquire.
“I don’t have a choice,” mentioned Bristol Hospital CEO Kurt Barwis. “What we’re trying to do is sustain a mission of taking care of this community.”
Bristol Well being is one in every of Connecticut’s most financially strained methods, and executives are at present in talks with the administration of Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont about an acquisition by state-owned UConn Well being. The proposed deal is, partially, an effort to maintain the hospital afloat.
Barwis mentioned the hospital has taken steps to assist sufferers with sudden payments, together with enlisting monetary counselors to achieve out to sufferers earlier than elective procedures to debate value and monetary help.
However Wooden, who was sued by Bristol, mentioned nobody from the hospital talked to her earlier than her surgical procedure. When she known as the hospital after receiving the $12,000 invoice, she mentioned she was advised there was nothing they might do as a result of her insurance coverage had denied the declare.
“They would not talk to me about it,” Wooden mentioned. “They wanted their money.”
Bristol spokesperson Albert Peguero additionally blamed Wooden’s insurer and mentioned the hospital labored with Wooden as she went by means of quite a few insurance coverage appeals with Aetna.
Wooden didn’t fare any higher with Aetna. It turned out that her well being plan coated solely $15,000 value of bariatric surgical procedure, that means she was answerable for any payments that exceeded that.
Aetna spokesperson Shelly Bandit mentioned Wooden had been notified of this provision, although Wooden disputes this.
The back-and-forth with the hospital and the insurer enraged Wooden. However after she was sued, she concluded she had no extra choices. She settled with Bristol, agreeing to pay the complete steadiness on a fee plan of $150 a month, courtroom data present. Underneath the settlement, it might take Wooden nearly seven years to repay the debt.
Final yr, Wooden confronted further monetary challenges after her mom died and her husband misplaced his job and was unemployed for six months.
Wooden mentioned she’s regained a couple of third of the 100 kilos she misplaced after her surgical procedure due to the stress. Some months she pays Bristol lower than $150. In January, the hospital positioned a lien on her dwelling.
“We don’t have savings. We don’t have the extra money. We’re living check by check,” Wooden mentioned. “We’re working-class people trying to make a living, trying to do the right thing. And we always get screwed.”
‘I Don’t Have Hours on Finish’
It’s troublesome to know what number of medical debt lawsuits come up from disputed payments. However most U.S. adults with healthcare debt say they’ve obtained a invoice previously 5 years that they thought contained an error, in response to a nationwide survey.
The prevalence of disputed medical payments is one cause many advocates for sufferers say hospitals and different healthcare suppliers shouldn’t sue folks they deal with.
“Understanding insurance to begin with and then navigating denials or bills that are not plainly understood leaves patients stuck in an opaque system where they have the least leverage and power,” mentioned Eva Stahl, a vice chairman of Undue Medical Debt, a nonprofit that has labored with states to purchase and retire debt — together with for greater than 150,000 Connecticut residents.
“Patients understandably are left with questions and confusion,” Stahl mentioned.
Timothy Bigham, who owns a building firm and was sued in 2023 by Danbury Hospital, mentioned he by no means understood why he was billed greater than $64,000 after he was hospitalized following a 2019 coronary heart assault.
Bigham, who lives in Danbury, Connecticut, mentioned he was insured on the time. However quickly after he obtained dwelling, Bigham started getting common calls from the hospital. He was advised his insurer wasn’t paying the invoice as a result of he refused to “release medical records,” he recalled.
“I had insurance when I had the heart attack, but it’s my job to get the insurance company to pay?” Bigham mentioned. “I’m self-employed. I work in construction. I don’t have hours on end to sit on the phone trying to talk to somebody at an insurance company.”
Bigham mentioned he in the end “stopped dealing with it” as a result of he didn’t know what else to do.
Then, in 2023, Danbury Hospital sued him. A choose dismissed the case in 2025, citing the hospital’s “failure to prosecute with reasonable diligence,” in response to courtroom data. However by then, the alleged debt had devastated Bigham’s credit score rating, tanking it by over 100 factors, he mentioned.
Northwell’s Schulz declined to touch upon any particular affected person instances, citing privateness legal guidelines.
Connecticut handed a legislation in 2024 barring medical debt from shopper credit score stories.
A handful of states have tried to guard sufferers from lawsuits by means of measures together with limiting when hospitals can pursue authorized motion. Illinois, for instance, prohibits lawsuits towards uninsured sufferers who show they’ll’t afford their unpaid payments. Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Maryland, and Virginia prohibit liens and foreclosures for medical debt.
‘It Was a Nightmare’
Dominique Jean Pierre was equally shocked by the $20,000 invoice he obtained after he was hospitalized at Norwalk Hospital with a urinary tract an infection in July 2020.
Jean Pierre, 66, had labored for practically twenty years as a bellhop at a Hilton resort in Stamford owned and operated by Atrium Hospitality, a Georgia-based firm. When he obtained sick, the resort was quickly closed due to covid lockdowns.
What Jean Pierre didn’t notice, he mentioned, was that the resort had additionally lower off worker well being advantages. He mentioned he was advised by the hospital that he’d be answerable for the invoice.
“It was a nightmare,” he mentioned.
Jean Pierre mentioned he begged his supervisor for assist however was advised there was nothing the corporate may do. Atrium Hospitality didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Two years after Jean Pierre’s hospitalization, Norwalk Hospital sued him for greater than $20,000, courtroom data present.
Jean Pierre mentioned he tried twice to use for monetary help, however the hospital advised him he and his spouse made an excessive amount of to qualify, though his medical payments totaled nearly 1 / 4 of their annual earnings of about $87,000.
With nowhere to show, Jean Pierre settled with Norwalk Hospital, now a part of the Northwell system, in 2025, agreeing to pay the complete invoice in $100 month-to-month installments, data present. At that fee, he will likely be paying off the debt till 2042.
After the settlement, he mentioned, the choose inspired him to achieve out to elected officers to attempt to get the debt canceled. Jean Pierre was exhausted.
“He says to me, ‘You have to go to your senators. Go to the governor.’ I said, ‘That’s too much. [I’m just going to] let it go.’”
Jean Pierre has left the Hilton and now works as a private care attendant, as does his spouse. However he mentioned it nonetheless nags him that companies and healthcare suppliers obtained thousands and thousands of {dollars} in authorities assist throughout the pandemic, whereas he was left with $20,000 in medical debt.
“They gave money for the hotel. They gave money for the hospital. They gave money for a lot of stuff,” he mentioned. “But we don’t see none.”
‘I’m Not Attempting To Run Away’
Different sufferers mentioned they felt trapped, even when they tried to do the appropriate factor.
Deneen Brown, who runs a small daycare out of her dwelling in Norwalk, was sued by Norwalk Hospital in 2024 for $7,200 over payments she allegedly incurred “on or about 2019 and 2020,” in response to the lawsuit.
Brown mentioned she was shocked by the lawsuit, as she believed she’d had medical health insurance on the time. However as a small-business proprietor who took pleasure in sustaining good credit score and staying on high of her funds, she mentioned she dedicated to taking good care of it.
“I’m not trying to run away from something that may be my responsibility,” Brown mentioned. “If you say I owe it, I’m going to figure it out, and I’m going to pay it.”
In January 2025, she agreed to an almost 13-year fee plan of $50 a month, courtroom data present. Usually she pays extra, she mentioned.
The next month, the hospital positioned a lien on her dwelling. Brown mentioned she by no means realized the hospital would proceed to penalize her, even after she agreed to a fee plan.
“Had I known that, I would have never settled,” she mentioned.
This text was produced in partnership with The Connecticut Mirror, a statewide nonprofit newsroom that covers public coverage and politics.
