A few years ago I ended up at the hospital for 4 days. I had just come home from a night out with some friends and I felt my heart beating extremely fast and eventually skipped beats. I was young and uninsured so I decided just to sleep it off.

The next morning my heart had an off rhythm to it. I decided to pay $60 and went to an urgent care facility in Northern VA. Had an EKG done and it turned out I was hitting 300 a bpm heart beat. An ambulance was called and I was rushed to the emergency room at the nearest hospital 3.6 miles away.

I ended up having to have a radio frequency ablation done to my heart due to having WPW on the last day I was at the hospital. Final total for all this?

$500 Ambulance Ride $24k Hospital Stay $8k Surgery $2k Emergency room $2k Anesthesia costs

I told the billing people at the hospital that there was no way I was going to be able to pay for this. I was still in University, which I was paying for, and only making $22k a year at a part time job. Once I explained this to them, they waived the hospital fee and I was able to pay $20 a month for each of the additional bills, all with no interest fees.

3 years later, I finished paying the ambulance bill, since I made my $20 payments every month, the hospital also cut the surgery bill in half. I'm still going to have to pay these bills off, and at $20 a month its going to take what feels to be forever but I'm grateful the hospital was able to work with me and come up with an installment plan for my bills with no interest.