last couple times i've asked for an itemized bill they sent me to collections, used to have no issue doing that.
So I found out that a hospital sending any bill to collections is actually a violation and contacted a credit company about it and had the bills erased from my credit history. Not sure if this is a state by state thing or not, but that definitely seems illegal what they did in your case.
I got one for like $1.27 or something stupid. The hospital never contacted me, just sent it off to collections and I had some guy calling me weekly trying to get me to pay. I would go on and on about being broke, try to negotiate payments, demanded physical paperwork. This went on for months until he caught me in a mood to take care of it.
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