Parents have been ignoring bills

Last year around September my dad was diagnosed with cancer and started doing chemotherapy. He and my mom have a less than stellar grasp on the American language and have been ignoring every single bill that's come in, and there are A LOT of different bills that come in. I guess they plan on waiting until everything before dealing with it?

Health insurance is definitely too complex for them to fully understand, and I don't understand it enough myself to try and explain it to them so I'm here to hopefully learn more.

My first question is, is it viable what they're doing? Ignoring every bill until the end? Or is it much better to start tackling them now?

And as for trying to understand how insurance, I've done a bit of Googling and this is what I'm getting right now, so please correct me where I'm wrong. Just making these numbers up, but for example:

Total amount of all bills: $30,000

Deductible: $1,500

Coinsurance: 10%

Maximum out-of-pocket: 3,500

They pay $1,500 in full, leaving $28,500 as the total remaining. Deductible is met and insurance starts kicking in.

Based on the coinsurance %, my parents are responsible for $2,850 more. However, they only need to pay $2,000 more before they hit the out-of-pocket cap of $3,500, and insurance covers everything else.

Is the above example correct? And if yes, can they just pay $3,500 straight up the first time and the hospital/insurance company will know how to calculate and figure things out? What if they pay over the cap instead; will that be caught and the amount refunded or something?

I ended up writing a lot more than I thought I would so thank you in advance to anyone who reads and helps out.

submitted by /u/shikinoaiza
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