Medical Debt

Hello I just wanted to add my 2 cents regarding your question!!
Most of the time we do not owe a Collection company a dime we did not contract with them, They bought the debt after the original creditor (Doctors, Hospitals, or Credit Card Co) charged it off with the IRS. I am not advocating not paying your bills however I would never pay a debt collector unless they can provide a contract with my signature on it, and most of the time they CANNOT. The debt collectors will hold that debt over your head even when you pay them in full so I just do not put up with them. I took the time to learn the laws and I make them do things according to the laws that we have been conditioned NOT to know for soo many yrs, by doing these things I have cleaned up my credit report and have had all my collection accts and medical debt removed in one yr (I never paid the debt collectors a dime in fact they had to pay ME!) and have a great score now even with a bankruptcy on there from yrs ago. The FDCPA laws indicate they must VALIDATE the DEBT. This is done by sending them a letter asking them to validate the debt first of all, most of the time they CANNOT validate it since they bought the debt for pennies on the dollar therefore they do not have contract agreement that says we owe them. We did NOT contract with them in writing to pay them anything! Send them a debt validation letter which says they must validate the debt by proving that we have a contract with them. They will usually send you a statement from the original creditor, or a bill from them in all actuality this is nothing but verifying the debt NOT validating it! Now in your case you want to clean up your credit report, you will need to send a letter to each credit bureau stating that......I am writing to dispute the following debts and them list each medical or collection acct with the acct numbers. They will them contact the collector and most of the time say the debt is valid, although they must state on their followup on each entry that it is disputed. They will usually send you an updated credit report and their findings. Once you dispute the debts with the credit bureaus you will get letters from the debt collectors again, since disputing with the credit bureaus seems to wake the sleeping giants and this is the time to send them a validation letter within 30 days via certified mail with return receipt. Once I send them the letters they will usually sell the debt to another debt collector since they know they cannot validate the debt so since they cant they are not allowed to try to collect on that debt until they can do so and by me disputing the debt with the credit bureaus and the using the validation letters they realize that I know the FDCPA, TCPA, and FCRA laws and plan to hold them to the law. I have had them just remove the entry off my credit report after taking these steps. It is great! IF they sell the debt to another collector you will take the same steps. Please research the FDCPA. TCPA and FCRA laws you will learn sooo much and will not have these bottom feeder debt collectors making you believe that you must pay them just because they sent you a piece of paper that says so. We have been conditioned to do what we are told to do by these people, its time we make them obey! There are websites that you can join that have all the docs and all the info you need and so much more also there are free weekly calls at talkshoe dot com....just search for what lies in your debt on talkshoe......You will learn soo much about this sort of thing. I wish you the best my friend!