Medical attorney says more people receiving Covid vaccine bills is a disturbing trend

FOX 2 - If you got your Covid vaccine - did you get a bill too? You should not be charged but it is becoming a disturbing trend.

It’s happening more often than you think and Joe Rivet with Rivet Health Law Practice explains.

"The vaccine should not cost you, you should not get a bill for getting the vaccination and you shouldn’t get a bill for getting a test," Rivet said.

Requesting medical records, legally, you can be charged per page. Maybe a dollar and some change. But Rivet’s Law Firm is seeing charges, in some cases, five times that.

"For a small ER visit, a charge could be up to $85 to $100 for a very simple ER visit," he said. "And so, when you’re requesting that record, you get hit with this, 'You have to pay $85 to release the records.'"

The medical records being held by large hospitals systems aren’t always being up-charged by the hospital system. Sometimes it’s a third party.

"The hospital or medical group or subcontract the medical records to another company and that company is supposed to manage those transactions," he said. "So if they’re not up on the laws, rules and regulations, they may be imposing things to the patient, unbeknownst to the hospital or to the medical group."

While sometimes it’s an oversight, sometimes there is fraud to look out for.

"Tagging a service with that particular vaccine or test, to say you need to get these other services, we have to see you and do all of these things and you start to build out a medical bill that you truly don’t need," he said.

FOX 2: "If people just ignore this, it could hurt their credit?"

"Yeah, it’s a medical bill, potentially," he said. "Potentially you could go to collections, if it’s a bill for a medical record, you have not received a medical record and you’re just waiting, unbeknownst to you, you have a charge where it says 'pay this' before we release the record."

Rivet very few attorneys in the Detroit area dealing with medical bills. The bottom line is, if you go in for a Covid vaccine and you get charged for an office visit, that’s a red flag. Call an attorney.