Collections agencies need to provide you with an itemized list of what you owe and to who.
If a hospital gives out this information, especially if they didn’t even try to collect it themselves, they have violated HIPPA.
Will a collections agency give you a document proving they vioated HIPPA? No. Do you owe debts on something w/o receipts? No.
Not sure of the situation in the US but here in Switzerland collections companies are probably the shadiest bunch of tryhards you can find. They’ll straight up lie to you, bully you into paying stuff you don’t owe and there’s basically no real oversight. It’s quite a problem and our politicians seem unwilling to do anything and if you tell the people here that you need to do something to protect people from debt collect, they go the old shaming route.
All of that, keep in kind, in a ststem where I can go straight to the goverment, with basically no proof of anything, pay 40.- tell them how much I think someone once me and they will send that person a very stern worded letter comanding them to pay that, tell them why they should not pay it and if you don’t react or pay it lands before a court. All those things are also put into a register that new landlords and sometimes even employers wanna see from you. And if someone wrongfully sends you one of these or you actually pay them, they will still be in that register and fuck you over for the next 5 years.
So we don’t need debt collectors yet those cockroaches still rake in millions if not billions every year in what is basically extortion.
They are similar in the states. They will lie at the drop of a dime. They cannot hold medical debt against you. It’s VERY easy to dismiss this kind of shit.