My question involves collection proceedings in the State of: Texas
My husband had to go to the ER for treatment back in June or July 2009 for food poisoning. The hospital billed both our primary and secondary insurance and it was applied to our deductible.
Subsequently, the hospital sent us a bill for our portion and I began making payments each month on that account. We have several "open" accounts with this particular facility and figured that they would treat this outstanding balance the same as the others; allowing us to make monthly payments until the debt was paid off. Not so.
I soon (within four weeks) started receiving notices from a debt collector (not the hospital) that we had basically, ignored, the debt and had not been taking any action toward paying the obligation. Since the balance on the debt collectors notice was correct, I had nothing to dispute except for the aligation that we had not taken any action toward the debt. I figured that since I had received the notice from the debt collector so quickly that they just hadn't "registered" the fact that we had started making payments to the hospital. I assumed the same thing with the next letter, but by the third letter, I wrote to tell them that we had been making payments to the hospital (2 by then) and that they needed to quit saying that we were ignoring the debt. Then we got a bill from a Bank indicating that they had bought our healthcare account from the hospital, opened a revolving credit line for us and now we have to pay interest at 15% on the balance we owed to the hospital. Can the hospital do this? I never applied for a credit account to pay the debt, this bank just opened the account for us, and now expects us to pay 15% interest on the principal balance.
I didn't think that a credit account could be opened unless a person agreed to account, signed for it, and agreed to the interest terms?

