As a young person recently out of high school, Logan Olafson was working toward financial stability and living independently from their parents, “figuring out life,” they said.
After facing some issues with sleep, Logan sought out medication, but suffered an overdose in May 2021. Aside from paying for rent and bills, now Logan had to worry about paying off medical debt, too.
“What made it more of a big deal … was that none of my bills that were supposed to tell me how much I had to pay were sent to me, for some reason. And so, I didn’t get any of my bills until they were sent to a collections agency,” they said.
The collections agency started contacting Logan in December 2022, well after they had gotten treatment.
Because Logan did receive a bill for the ambulance needed to get to the emergency room — and paid it — they assumed other medical costs were taken care of by their insurance.
Instead, Logan had $1,416 in medical debt to tackle.
They recall their treatment consisted of some IV and a lot of monitoring, “to make sure that the medication, the amount that was in my system, wasn’t going to do any damage to me.”
Logan felt shocked that those services were so costly. “I didn’t know what to do. (I was) trying to figure out what I could do to not have this money, all of a sudden, that I’m not gonna be able to pay, and it possibly affecting my credit, which I’m working really hard to have good credit,” they said.
When Logan was venting about the issue, a friend and coworker suggested looking into Dollar For. And once Logan learned about the organization, they said it gave them hope that “it would work for me.”
“I was able to go online and just put in my information. It was super easy,” they said. Logan added that Dollar For followed up with them regularly and coached them on what to expect, instead of leaving them to figure it out alone as the hospital did.
“The hospital ended up fully approving coverage, and even approving coverage in case I had anything that I had to be hospitalized for, for the next 30 days,” Logan said. It had been three weeks from the time they applied for help with Dollar For to the time their hospital debt was cleared.
Not having to pay over $1,000 for their medical care gave Logan a lot of relief and financial freedom: they planned to treat their partner to a birthday celebration as well as “pay for my medical expenses that I normally have.”
Logan said they’d recommend anyone with similar debt or medical issues reach out to Dollar For for assistance, mostly due to the speedy replies and “to not have to dig through, like, 10 pages of information.”
“I appreciate the help,” they said. “Not having this stress and worry makes me better able to try to get my life together as a 21-year-old. I’m trying to figure my life out rather than having to pay medical debt,” Logan said.
Read about other patients whose Emergency Room bills are now history: Steve, Connie, and Jacob.