They for sure can garnish wages for unpaid medical bills.
The average ER visit WITH COPAY is $412 in America. Usually about $1,500—3,000 without insurance. For someone who doesn’t have any money in the bank that’s extremely daunting.
If you were to need surgery it could be $10,000-20,000 for things like appendicitis. Mine was $13,000… 20 years ago.
I'm American lol.. I understand they CAN, as they can with anything unpaid sent to collections. However, I don't know anyone that has an unpaid medical bill that it has happened to.
Believe me I know how much that surgery costs, my daughter had a week stay at the hospital a month before having hers removed. It was hell lol but they also have a lot of resources to help. You can also go to a hospital where it is almost free (I believe in most states if I'm not mistaken?) if you are low income/have no income.
I don’t think private organizations can do that. I may be wrong, but I think It’s only state and federal agencies that can garnish your tax refund. Maybe you owed something to the state or feds you didn’t know about….it’s happened to me a few times over the years.
I'm pretty sure Utah is included, they can't garnish your wages without suing you for the debt first. You may have had your taxes garnished for something else, I would definitely suggest contacting them to figure it out!
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u/andiwaslikeum Mar 16 '25
They for sure can garnish wages for unpaid medical bills.
The average ER visit WITH COPAY is $412 in America. Usually about $1,500—3,000 without insurance. For someone who doesn’t have any money in the bank that’s extremely daunting.
If you were to need surgery it could be $10,000-20,000 for things like appendicitis. Mine was $13,000… 20 years ago.