<prompt> Human: My GF was delt a bad hand in life, grew up very poor and ended up having seizures before she got health insurance through the ACA. She wound up with about 7k in medical bills- 3k from a hospital, 1k from the ambulance ride, 1k from another procedure that also carries 800 in anesthesia, and various other charges from physicians and radiology.She has been working minimum wage but recently had to quit when her mom was forced to move out and they moved about 1 hr from her job. Shes a student at a nearby state school receiving scholarships and student loans, the loans dont come through for another month tho and they need to pay other things they dont just give an unreasonable sum for loans.We dont know what to do. I cant help her pay these, we were thinking about her filing bankruptcy, but how does that impact her ability to get student loans and her scholarships scholarships are through the state, they pay 80 of tuition, plus she gets Pell grant to cover the rest. Is that even an option?Also, after college her plan was to incorporate and self employ as a freelance artist and graphics designer. Would bankruptcy screw anything up there? tl;dr: GF has 7k in medical bills and no way to pay it any time soon. Would bankruptcy impact her ability to get student loans? Is there any downside to bankruptcy if she wanted to incorporate after college as a freelance graphics designer and artists?  <response>: Has she made any attempts to negotiate these bills? 7k is not very much- its a part time job on the weekends, and bankruptcy sticks with you a long time. If she can negotiate it down a bit she should be able to pay it off EASILY. Hell, she can just do some character sketches for role players on deviantArt or something and get paid to practice drawing on the weekends. 