miVoyce

Business services entrepreneur David Dubé and healthcare attorney David Holt have launched miVoyce.com, an online service which supports and trains patients who are struggling to pay medical bills and are at a loss as to the next step. miVoyce™ provides a user-friendly, online training platform and patient advocacy community. Through the course, patients gain knowledge and the ability to navigate through the medical maze. Individuals learn how to read medical bills, spot errors and negotiate payments. According to The Commonwealth Fund, a health policy research organization, about 64 million Americans struggled to pay medical bills in 2014 and of that 64 million, 59% had medical insurance. In fact, 2 out of 5 Americans have some form of medical debt. Medical debt is now the leading cause of bankruptcies in the US. Simply having health insurance does not guarantee that healthcare expenses will be covered or affordable. In addition, the miVoyce training course educates you on how to use your health plan to avoid unexpected, expensive healthcare charges.

When a family member of Dubé’s was diagnosed with cancer, Dubé reached out to Holt to draw up a will and healthcare directive. Holt shared his frustration that many of the people he worked with were having trouble paying medical bills, even those that were insured. Holt had strong experience negotiating hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills in order to help people avoid bankruptcy. Dubé suggested that this system of negotiating medical bills could be available online for the people navigating healthcare. This was the foundation for miVoyce.

The miVoyce online training course offers a series of proprietary videos that users can watch on computers and mobile devices. The course also includes downloadable e-books, letters and forms supporting the course curriculum as well as on online support community of other users, the cofounders and healthcare experts. Patients will equip themselves with tools and advice to save money on their own healthcare. By educating consumers directly, the course eliminates the need for expensive middleman negotiators, such as an attorney. “The system we are using has been around for decades,” says Holt. Advocates specializing in medical billing have grown from a cottage industry to a frequently sought after service partly due to the arcane language and the twists and turns of the Affordable Care Act. miVoyce also serves businesses by providing services in a user-friendly plug and play platform educating employees how to use their healthcare plan effectively.  Benefits include cost savings and increased employee satisfaction in healthcare administration.

The course is available at www.miVoyce.com.