If a tourist needs life saving treatment, who gets billed and how?

17 comments

1. A smart tourist travels with travel health insurance.

2. Ideally their travel insurance. Failing that they do but….they’re just gonna fly home. So, it becomes bad debt and everyone still here pays for it.

3. The same way they do in your country when not from a reciprocating country.

4. Ideally the tourist will have travel insurance, and the travel insurer will pay for it. But collecting on a debt when the debtor is in another country is not really feasible so the hospital could just end up eating some or all of the cost. If this person is from a country where they need a visa to enter the US, I’m sure that medical debt will have some kind of effect if they ever want to go back to the US but no idea there lol. Maybe not!

   At any rate, tourists should have travel insurance including health insurance. It’s just safer.

5. I mean if you don’t have insurance and can’t afford it there are options up to and including the hospital just eating the lost money.

   They HAVE to treat you. They will work with you on payment of what you can afford.

6. The tourist gets the bill. They will receive it after services rendered and it is their responsibility to pay for it or have insurance to cover it.

7. Travel insurance.

   Or there’s the potential that the hospital will approach them the same way they’d approach a homeless person and just be forced to eat the cost since there’s no real way of getting that money once the person leaves.

   A hospital has to treat you regardless of your ability to pay. And once you leave the country it’ll be difficult for them to collect.

8. The tourist receives a bill and claims it against their travel or medical insurance company, same thing that happens when anyone traveling in Europe gets a bill.

9. Travel insurance exists

10. In my country you can just take out travel insurance. We also have health insurance that will probably reimburse this. So just order your insurance to pay.

11. Is there a country that I can get treatment in and not pay? I got stitches in Canada once and it cost more than in the USA.

12. If they have insurance, it gets billed. If they don’t have insurance, they get billed.

13. How: the hospital will mail you a bill. You can ask for an itemized bill with the relevant CPT codes

14. You better have cash on hand to cover it or it’s RIP

15. Their travel insurance. Failing that, the tourist themselves, but that debt will just be written off eventually.

16. Depends on whether or not they have travel insurance. It’ll probably be cheaper then if you had to get something as a non-citizen in Canada though.

17. The health care provider goes after whoever they can to get as much as they can. The insurance company the tourist hopefully got travel insurance from. Or even the country/province/state the tourist is from of the tourist can’t cough up enough cash.