Medical debt question

My son was born almost 2 years ago. For his birth and hospital stay (including a 3 visit to the Nicu), my insurance covered everything except for $10,000, which got discounted to about 7,000. The amount was sent to collections, but I never answered the phone. After a while they stopped leaving voice mails. My credit score was not affected. Just recently, the balance got sent to a new collections agency. I didn't recognize the phone number, so I answered. The representative was fairly polite and said that they could take the amount down to $4500, as long as we pay in the next 90 days, or we could go on a payment plan. I said I would think about it and call him back. I would love some advice on what to do. If I don't pay the bill and just ignore calls from collections again, would the bill eventually just fall off? Or would it eventually affect my credit score? I live in Arizona if that makes a difference.

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It will affect your credit. For many years I didn’t have medical insurance I had a personal accident and ended up in the hospital. It stopped me from getting credit cards financing my house financing my car. I ended up reaching out to local churches after the collection did get taken into somebody else also. I was offered about 50% off as well. As I said, I called all my local churches. I reached out to this website that was called help.gov and called every single person on the list that said they would help with medical expenses. I think I had about four different churches and two personal people donate to cover the cost of my bill. I couldn’t afford it

https://www.theshannonfoundation.com This foundation was also created to help people with medical expenses for hospital stays. You know medical equipment that insurance doesn’t cover. You will have to have a social worker reach out to them on your behalf. Normally, you can call your state and ask to speak to the social worker and they will help you for free sometime. Your insurance also has social workers that will help you for free too. Utilize this service when my middle child needed a Cranial helmet and our insurance didn’t cover his helmet nor any of the visits. I just called my health and asked for social worker to help me.

It should have affected your credit score when it was sent to collections. It falls off after 7 years, but if you need to improve your credit score before then you will want to pay it off. From what I have seen there is more negotiation room the closer you are to 7 years. Really depends on your circumstances.