[kbenson]

> Pay as little as you can get away with on those medical bills during treatment. Then sort it all out in bankruptcy court.

That sounds like a good strategy anyway, since you can't ever be sure a procedure will fix a problem, even if it should, so future expenses are a fairly open question.

You don't have a lot of options if after your first medical solution you've paid everyone in full and are out of money but the problem isn't resolved, but frugal rationing of payments might mean you have quite a few tries before your funds are exhausted (even if you've left a trail of partially paid bills).

Unfortunately, I imagine the length of time involved means it's probably tricky to prevent past bills being reported as debt that might affect future actions.

[Retric]

Yea, this really depends on the illness but there is a lot of slack in the system.

It can take 2-3 months before you get a bill after medical treatment add another 60-90 days before it's very late and you have 6 months or so before your credit get's trashed assuming zero payment.

However, partial payments can push this out much further. Remember, companies don't want to sell you debt as they only get a fraction of it's total value so work with them. So, paying say 1% per month is often enough to avoid sending a very large bill to collections.