Owing personal debt can be like an elephant in your living room. You know it is there, but you do not want to think about it or acknowledge that it’s there. Now is the time to be level headed and be realistic about your debt, to discover the answer to the troublesome question that is on everyone’s mind: “just how much debt do I have?”

If you don’t know the answer to this question, do not feel too bad. A lot of people don’t know, and if they do know, many times, their spouses have no idea. You can’t heal your finances without knowing just how much baggage you are carrying and at what interest rates. So grab your bills, get a calculator and determine how much debt you really have. Once you know your total debt, you can start getting rid of it. Besides, it might be cathartic to put everything down on paper, and it might not even be as bad as you think it is!

Your next step is to figure out what your credit score is. As you may already know, your credit score is a reflection of your responsibility when it comes to taking on new debt and may have an effect on your ability to obtain credit, get a new car, living situation, or even a job.

You can get a hold of one free report once a year from each of the three credit bureaus. That’s three credit reports all in all. So it seems sensible to obtain one every four months. This is a surefire and free way to be certain that you have not fallen victim to identity theft.

To get a hold of a free credit report, you can pay a visit to annualcreditreport.com; this site is set made by the Federal Trade Commission. The thing to know about credit reports? High scores are good, low are bad. Once you begin to pay off your debt, the score will rise, once you begin to fall behind with payments, the score will drop. A high score means lower interest rates, low score means higher rates.

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Bankruptcy might be looked upon as a quick fix answer to financial issues. But the effects of bankruptcy are long term and can greatly impair your ability to obtain employment, a place of residence, and any type of credit. It is crucial to weigh the pros and the cons of bankruptcy before making a major choice.

Admittedly, bankruptcy comes with a number of benefits. First and foremost it annihilates most of your debt. It can aid you with missed debt payments, defaults, repossessions and lawsuits. If you have horrible credit, it can get you started on rehabilitation.

Bankruptcy will put an end to phone calls from creditors, collections letters, repossessions, declined charge authorizations, cancelled credit cards, and lawsuits. Additionally, you are permitted to hold on to your car your car if you keep up on the payment; bankruptcy will also allow you to keep your home if you remain current on the payments.

Bankruptcy permits you to exit foreclosure and make monthly payments on amounts in the past. Finally, it halts creditors from making a claim after it is filed, even if your financial situation changes.

On the other hand, bankruptcy law offers a “fresh start” but only every six years in most instances. Bankruptcy will remain on your credit report for ten years and severely hurts your credit rating. Also, filing bankruptcy may require a wait of two years before it is possible to buy a home. Some lenders allow for home loans after one year however.

Bankruptcy does not clear away most tax debt. It does not annihilate student loan debt. It requires that you hand over your credit cards. Unfortunately, bankruptcy comes with a stigma that can be embarrassing, and it may cause you to lose some of your things.

If you are not positive whether you should file for bankruptcy or not, get in touch with your creditors to see what type of repayment plan they can come up for you. While bankruptcy is an option, in most cases it should be seen as a last resort.

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From 1999 to 2009, premium costs for family insurance have risen by one hundred and thirty one percent. Easily, that\’s over three times the rate at which working wages rose during this time. In this time of economic hardship, millions of jobs have been lost, putting workers who just lost their jobs at risk of also living without health insurance. For those who remain employed, employers are pushing more of the costs of health insurance onto their workers as they struggle with economic uncertainty. Then there are blue collar and retail workers, waitresses and the like who are paid less, work harder and are not offered health insurance plans at their jobs. No wonder that Americans are struggling to pay their medical bills.

In 2007, about seventy two million Americans struggled with medical bills. A large portion of these people made paying off their medical bills a priority, while they struggled to pay for basic necessities like food, rent or heat. More than THIRTY MILLION American adults used up ALL of their savings or BORROWED AGAINST THEIR HOMES in order to pay their outstanding medical bills. Unfortunately, in this time of recession, many Americans could not stop the bill collector from knocking on their door.

Thirty million Americans are being contacted every year by collection companies for unpaid medical bills; many people struggle to pay these. Most people are unclear as to why their insurance refused to pay a claim, others are confused about the amount they owe. Over half of people who were surveyed said that they were puzzled by the medical jargon on their bills, and one in four said confusion led them to allow bills to go past the due date or to be sent to a collection agency.

A medical bill that gets sent to collections will generally be reported to credit bureaus. This mark on their record results in a lower credit score. Medical accounts, even those that have been paid off in full will stay on a credit report for up to seven years. This will result in lower credit scores and increases the costs of mortgages, car loans, or credit card interest.

Fortunately, Ohio Congresswoman Kilroy acknowledged the long term effects of outstanding medical bills. She decided to address the situation because she saw medical debt as something that was unique. She introduced The Medical Debt Relief Act, which states that medical debt that is fully paid off or settled must be removed from a consumer\’s credit report within thirty days.

Despite the fact that this does not fix our botched healthcare system, it would offer peace of mind for those who have paid off medical debt, while the rest of nation waits for more encompassing health care reform.

Mallory McGuinness works for a debt collection agency. She also does articles on business and finance, the credit industry, and debt collection. Get a totally unique version of this article from our article submission service

What do you do if your income diminishes? You have less money, but the amount of debt you owe remains the same. What’s the best way to prioritize payments? If you have credit cards chances are you might also have personal loans and a mortgage.

Over the past few years, more consumers in a bind due to dwindling income have decided that credit cards should be higher than their mortgage payments on the prioritization list. As 2009 ended it was determined that twice as many consumers were delinquent with their mortgage payments while paying credit card payments than the other way around.

Despite the fact that some of this might be due to the credit crunch and lower balances on cards in general, this may be due to the typical tendency for people to lose faith in the value of their homes as they see the real estate market dwindle. A lot of homeowners are giving up and simply walking away from their homes with mortgages that they cannot afford. They figure that if the only punishment is a bad credit score, there isn’t much incentive for them to keep paying money if they are not building equity.

For families suffering from financial trouble, the basic necessities are still needed: food, water and shelter. Credit cards are the usual financing tactic in times of need. There is an understandable set of reasoning for prioritizing these bills. If a credit card is taken away, someone will lose the chance to pay for the bare necessities.

But a mortgage should be a higher priority than credit cards because the mortgage is secured debt. The bank that holds your mortgage can take your house away if you don’t pay because your house is collateral. While some people have no problem abandoning a house whose value has decreased, it’s not considered a very wise choice. There is a good chance real estate value eventually will come around, so sitting tight might pay off.

Mallory McGuinness works for a debt collection agency. Also, she composes articles on the credit industry, business and finance, and debt collection Get a totally unique version of this article from our article submission service

Layoffs and pay cuts moved more people into bankruptcy last year, and researchers are asserting that the situation is most likely not going to improve until the unemployment issue improves. In Wisconsin, bankruptcy filings raised to 30 percent in 2009. This came on top of a 35 percent increase in the preceding year.

According to bankruptcy lawyers, not only is it layoffs and firings that are motivation to file. It’s the losses of once-regular over time pay and full time status that have left consumers unable to keep up with monthly payments that in the past were not an issue to pay.

U.S. Bankruptcy Court data illustrates that there were 27,413 bankruptcy petitions filed in Wisconsin last year. More than 80% were Chapter 7 cases. Chapter 7 cases take away medical bills, credit card balances, and other types of debt. Recent Research by The Associated Press illustrated that more than 1.4 million bankruptcies were filed in 2009, an increase of about 32% from 2008.

And although bankruptcy annihilates the looming debt and offers consumers a fresh financial start, people often remain unemployed and are unable to find employment to get an adequate income again.

Even worse, unless the economy improves enough for businesses to start hiring, there is not much reason to believe that bankruptcies will go down in 2010. Experts have noted that home foreclosures will continue to pile up in 2010 because people who previously had adequate credit have lost employment and cannot keep up with payments.

Bankruptcy could seem like an adequate option to get a fresh start, but it has a negative effect on your credit report for ten years, leaving you unable to get a car, place of residence, or employment. Before declaring bankruptcy, it is a wise decision to speak with your creditors and see if some sort of repayment plan can be worked out.

Mallory Megan is an employee at a debt collection company. Also, she writes pieces on the credit industry, business, finance, and debt collection. You are welcome to reprint this article – but get your own unique content version here.

You are losing up to ten percent of your collections if payer underpayments are not being aggressively pursued by your outsourced medical billing company. It is simply a minimum requirement of being in business that medical billing services compare your payments to the amounts your payers have agreed to pay you.

Any medical billing process must include features that are specifically designed to counteract the actions taken by payers to withhold money from medical practices and facilities. Examples of these features include: comparing claims to payers adjudication rules before submission, calling on submitted claims that have not been denied or paid, posting all payment information – including denials, pursuing underpayments, and using predictive payment estimates in the patient collection process.

Today’s focus will be on pursuing underpayments. The first step of this pursuit is comparing a practice’s Explanation of Benefits from the payers to the amounts the payers have agreed to pay for each procedure. Many billing processes assume the payment posters will catch these underpayments; this is a bad assumption. The billing process must have an automated comparison process.

The reason that comparison to allowables must be automated is because of the clever and systematic manner in which payers typically underpay claims. These underpayment patterns can be difficult to spot, but one of the advantages a Medical Insurance Billing Service has is that it sees payment information and patterns across many clients for many payers. This allows medical claims billing services that regularly and systematically compare payments to contractual allowables to spot patterns that a single practice might miss.

A disturbing pattern that can regularly be seen by a medical billing company that is paying attention is one where a payer will select a set of procedures and underpay this set of procedures across a large number of providers (often by the same amount). This will continue for about 30 days and then the payer will resume paying the procedures at the correct amount and begin underpaying a whole new selection of procedures.

Although the amount of the underpayments may be small ($5 to $15), the totals can be quite large: upwards of a 10 percent net reduction in the payments the payer sends the practice. Despite the magnitude of the total, the constant hopping from CPT to CPT for underpayments and the relatively small amount of the underpayment on any individual claim makes the loss of revenue hard to spot – let alone pursue.

As you can imagine, these small underpayments switching from CPT to CPT would be difficult for a busy payment poster to notice. They will often spot the large underpayments (which occur with a much lower frequency than the small underpayments), but without automated comparisons the smaller underpayments are typically missed.

This single action (comparison of payments to allowables) can increase a medical practice’s collections by 5 to 10 percent. This is why you need to insure this critical step is being completed by your medical billing service.

Identifying the underpayments is the first step of the journey. Dogged pursuit of the underpaid amounts is what actually drives up your practice’s revenue. This pursuit needs to go down to even small underpayments because once a payer sees that the small underpayments are being pursued they typically taper off and contractual payments resume at the appropriate level. Much like a small child, the insurance companies are trying to see what the can get away with.

Copyright 2008 by Carl Mays II

Most people’s New Year resolutions have been abandoned by the end of January. If you find your self in this group then take heart. You can still snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. To do so, you must understand two basic principals of achieving your ambitions:

1. View your failures (i.e., I have not flossed in two days) as minor set backs and not as utter failure (i.e., I might as well start saving for dentures); and

2. Create a series of intermediate goals between where you are and where you want to be (i.e., instead of “I will lose 50 pounds this year” focus on “I will lose 1 pound each week”).

These ideas do not only apply to personal goals, but to business goals as well. If you are trying to improve your medical collections in 2009, you should build upon these concepts. So, given these two points what is the best way to achieve a New Year’s resolution of improving your medical billing? The best place to start is with the goal of getting your claims out the door clean. This is a great starting point because it does many wonderful things:

- It focuses you on the most critical aspect of billing. If the claims go out the door clean you will find that all of the rest of the challenges start to become much more manageable;

- This goal can be easily broken down into smaller goals such as “I will improve my acceptance rate by 2% per month or I will implement a claim scrubber by the end of March;

- Set backs position you for better performance tomorrow. How? You look at the claims that did not go out the door clean and learn what went wrong. Do you have a problem at the front desk with gathering demographics? Do you have a problem with training your data entry people? Do you have one physician that consistently codes incorrectly? Do you have one payer that really dislikes one of your common procedures?

- Technology can be a powerful ally in achieving this goal. The use of coding tools, automated demographic verification tools and scrubbing claims will eliminate many sources of up-front errors that lead to claim rejections.

So, as we approach the end of January this is the time to double down:

- Measure your current performance level;

- Decide upon a stretch target (I will increase my clean claim percentage by 15 points this year);

- Create a “goal ladder” where each rung of the ladder represents an incremental, achievable goal on the way toward your ultimate goal. For instance your may set incremental goals of improving your clean claim performance by 1 percent each month; and

- Develop a process for gleaning learning from claims that do not initially clear the clean claim hurdle.

With this approach you can make 2009 your best medical billing year ever.

Copyright 2009 by Carl Mays II

ClaimCare Medical Billing Services has interviewed countless candidates that have just graduated from a medical billing school and coding school. As a rule, we find that the courses in a medical billing school (and coding school) add little value or knowledge to the resume of an individual with no prior medical billing experience.

In fact, when I do hire a medical billing school graduate they typically are started along side inexperienced new hires in our apprenticeship program. They start at the same pay and in need of almost the same training as individuals that have not spent the money or time on medical billing school. I would say at best, they start 3 months further up the learning curve than a completely inexperienced hire. This translates to about $0.50 per hour difference for 3 months (at best).

Although medical billing schools teach some terminology and medical billing concepts, they do not provide any of the experience necessary for an individual to start as a medical biller. In fact, more often than not we find that they have taught incorrect concepts and the “eduction” has to be unlearned before the individual can actually move on from being an apprentice. Many times the medical billing school graduates also have an inflated sense of confidence because of their training and are harder to teach and mentor in terms of proper medical billing because they are under the impression that they have already learned all they need to know.

A better path into medical billing is to avoid spending money on a medical billing school and instead spend time finding a medical billing company or doctor’s practice that will let you start your medical billing career by calling on medical claims or verifying patient insurance information prior to the patient’s appointment.

The beauty of this approach is that these activities build a great foundation for more advanced medical billing. They allow you to develop true knowledge about some of medical billing’s most important building blocks and they give you a resume that shows real experience. Finally, you are getting paid while you do this – not paying for an incomplete education that is unlikely to yield the results you desire.

Most organizations do not have a formal apprenticeship program, but if you interview with the specific tasks outlined above in mind then you can find an entry level opportunity. This opportunity will pay you to learn about medical billing and build your resume.

The certified coder that does not already have medical billing experience is typically hard pressed to find a coding position. Once, however, your have medical billing experience you can get real value from a certified coder certificate.

In summary, medical billing school is simply not worth the investment for an inexperienced student. You will find more success and greater financial rewards if you skip the medical billing school until you have the experience under your belt to make the certified coder courses a worthwhile investment.

Copyright 2008 by Carl Mays II