US medical bill passed onto Debt collector

LibbyL92

Flemstar said:

sourcrates said:

There is no reciprocal agreement, between the US and the UK, allowing the easy enforcement of judgments in either country.

The only way to enforce a US judgment in England & Wales is to enforce it at common law, by bringing a new action in the English courts, as I said previously, with the US judgment becoming the cause of action.

At that point, the US judgment is treated as a contract debt and new proceedings are therefore issued in an English Court for payment of that "debt".

Essentially, it is not possible to enforce a US judgment in England directly, you must first obtain an English judgment.

Then the law gets quite complex, but essentially, prior to obtaining a judgement in an English court, there are six conditions that must be satisfied before the case can be heard.

One of these conditions is that the debtor was present in court when the original judgement was handed down in the US, the others are based on jurisdiction, fraud, policy etc etc, It is for the debtor to attempt to prove that one of these conditions has not been met.

Now all this is assuming legal action has been taken and a judgement awarded against you in the US.

Non of which has happened, its just one letter you have received, from a 3rd party debt collector, in another country.

Now in the US, legal action, like healthcare, is all chargeable, and stupidly expensive, there is no way such a small debt would be escalated in such a manner as this, it would cost the Hospital 1000`s of dollars in legal fee`s to pursue this matter, it`s just not commercially viable to do so, nothing is going to happen.

However, if you want to avoid future issues with travel to the US, as they can be funny about things like this, you may want to consider a payment plan via the debt collector, but that is entirely your decision.

This person’s response seemed to give me some hope. I wondered if the OP followed their advice and just ignored the collection letters and it all went away. My debt is significantly higher, which is my worry. They might actually pursue this at a UK court.

I know ultimately I only have myself to blame. I didn’t plan on hurting myself while out trying to have a good time. Also my brother said the paramedics were insistent on taking me to A&E, he wanted to put me in a taxi and take me home.  Also they carried out the CT scan and other test without my consent. All I had was a bloodied nose. Just all seemed very excessive. But yeah it is my own fault I know that. 

Hello, 

so sorry haven’t been on in a very long time! 

I didn’t ignore it. I had a whole host of other issues arrive. Which I came back and posted about. 

My insurance never paid out and I ended up paying an uninsured discount which brought it down significantly. I ended up getting compensation from my insurance due to a big mistake on their hand which ended up working in my favour

how are you getting on??