New York hospitals are aggressively going after patients, poor patients, in ways that break state rules, according to The New York Times.

Hospitals are supposed to help patients fill out financial aid applications and guide them through the process. Instead the paper claims, many made the process impossible by demanding unnecessary documents, while others simply dumped bills with collection agencies, the paper claims. After some of these hospitals harassed and extracted what little they could from poor patients, the story alleged, they would write off the remainder as Charity Aid.