Hospital Bills – Application for Assistance

I received a call from a gentleman at HCRA (Health Care Responsibility Act) here in my area. HCRA is the source which will help pay for hospitalization bills. (i.e. my $8,008 due to the hospital for my ER visit that started this whole thing.) It’s a separate department from the Health Care division (which I’ve also applied for) but he can access the documentation from that application as well toward my HCRA application. He said that the Health Care treats Love and I as two separate households since we’re not married, but HCRA counts us as one. He needs a statement from us of the income we made in the month of May – basically the 30 days prior to the hospitalization. Unfortunately, the fact I am currently out on unpaid leave and thus receiving no income right now doesn’t apply for this program. (But apparently it does for the Health Care aspect.)

He said he’s not sure about our qualification since it’s based on BOTH our combined incomes but once I provide that, he can determine my eligibility. I seriously hope that they don’t say Love’s income is too much and deny me based on that. Because owing $8,000 is an overwhelming amount of money to us! It’s more then I made for the entire year after all.

So good to know it’s progressing, but I’m worried about my eligibility. I have no idea how I’d pay off an $8,000 bill. I mean, I’m still paying off my car and Love’s a/c repair from last year and that has a $3,500 balance on it and paying $150/month I’m still looking at over two years just paying THAT off. And this is more than twice as much. And I certainly can’t put anything like $150 toward it a month like I do the car balance. If, for example, I paid $20 a month toward the bill and had no interest on it, it would still take 39 years to pay it off. Seriously.

Yeah…huge fingers crossed I qualify.