Charity Care Programs

Charity Care Programs is sponsored by Hospitals and Healthcare Providers. Offered by hospitals and healthcare providers to assist patients who are unable to pay for medical services, often based on income and financial need.

Report reveals $14B gap in charity care Read Now What Is Charity Care? – Dollar For Skip to primary navigation Most hospitals offer discounts or bill forgiveness based on income. This is called “charity care.

” A hospital bill for $15,000 could become $150 — or even $0. Dollar For can help you apply for free. Get started here.

Hospitals set the rules about who qualifies for charity care Each hospital runs its own charity care program. Each decides how patients must apply and who qualifies. Hospitals typically consider the patient’s income, the number of people in the household, and the bill’s age when deciding who qualifies.

These examples show who might qualify for a discount. Every hospital policy is different. Your hospital may be more or less generous.

See if you qualify . Household of 1 making $50,000 Household of 2 making $68,000 Household of 3 making $85,000 Household of 4 making $103,000 * On average in 2025, households under 204% of the Federal Poverty Level will qualify for free care, and families under 322% will qualify for discounted care. These averages are derived from Dollar For’s national database of hospital financial assistance policies.

Some hospitals also consider whether a patient has insurance, what county or state the person lives in, and the size of the bill. Most patients have to apply for charity care In most cases, patients need to apply for charity care after they get a bill. Every hospital has its own application and process for applying.

The application is normally posted online. Patients must fill it out, then fax, email, or mail it to the hospital. They almost always have to provide copies of documents proving their income, such as tax returns, paystubs, or bank statements.

Some hospitals use pre-screening tools to offer debt forgiveness before sending a bill to a patient, but that is rare. Most, but not all, hospitals in the US offer charity care The Affordable Care Act requires nonprofit hospitals to have programs that benefit their community, including charity care programs.

Since more than half of hospitals in the United States are nonprofits, this means that many people have access to these debt relief programs. While there is no federal law requiring that for-profit and other hospitals offer charity care, many do. These programs typically work just like the nonprofit programs, but they don’t have to.

Hospitals benefit when they provide charity care Charity care is not a pot of money that hospitals give out. It can’t be “used up” and it’s not provided by charities. Instead, it is a hospital’s way of showing that it provides a benefit to the local community.

If you apply, you aren’t taking away money that could be used for anyone else. If you are approved for charity care, the hospital writes off your bill like it never existed. They report the total amount of debt that they forgive each year to the IRS and might even get paid by the government for waiving your bill.

Most hospitals have a 240-day deadline to apply, even if the bill is in collections Nonprofit hospitals must consider applications for all bills less than 240 days old. If the bill is already in collections, the hospital must still pull it out of collections to forgive or lower the patient’s bill. Some hospitals will consider applications for bills older than 240 days.

This depends on the hospital policy and state law. If a bill qualifies for charity care, hospitals must refund patients any money already paid If a patient qualifies for charity care, the law requires nonprofit hospitals to refund any payments made towards that bill. Dollar For can help you fight for a refund.

Some patients with insurance can still qualify for charity care Each hospital sets its own guidelines for whether they give charity care to patients with insurance. Many hospitals, but not all, will waive copays and deductibles. Charity care sometimes covers bills from other doctors at a hospital Doctors and others who work at hospitals separate bills for the same medical event.

Unfortunately, most financial assistance programs only apply to the hospital bills. But many policies do cover other providers like labs, radiologists, and anesthesiologists. These providers won’t automatically forgive bills when a patient qualifies for charity care.

In most cases, patients must first get approved for charity care by the hospital, then give copies of the approval letter to the doctors and other providers. In other cases, the doctors or other billers will have a separate charity care application that must be submitted.

The IRS sets the charity care rules for nonprofit hospitals Internal Revenue Service code 501(r) requires nonprofit hospitals to: Have a policy that tells who qualifies and how to apply Post the policy information on their website, signs in the hospital, and bills Give patients at least 240 days (about 8 months) to apply after they get a bill Give patients a chance to fix incomplete applications Pause sending a bill to collections while they are reviewing the financial assistance application Send the patient a letter with the final decision and reason Some states have laws that require all hospitals to offer financial assistance.

These laws can change the rules for nonprofit and for-profit hospitals. Check out our state law summaries for more .