
What Happens When Americans Don’t Pay a Hospital Bill - hrasyid
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/08/medical-bill-debt-collection/596914/
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alpineidyll3
I realized that what will finally cause this system to change is when everyone
stops paying these insane medical bills. Because they can't, and no longer
even care about mortgages. I think that day is very near indeed...

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danzig13
To fix healthcare, we need to gut the health insurance industry like a fish.

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inetsee
One part of the article that I noticed particularly was the line about "some
hospitals and doctors offices sell their debt to debt buyers, who pay pennies
for each dollar owed...".

There's an organization called RIP Medical Debt that takes donations, uses the
money to buy medical debt, then forgives the debt, which (should) clear any
credit rating problems. John Oliver even covered the issue on one of his
programs, and mentioned RIP Medical Debt. His program then donated enough
money to clear millions of dollars in medical debt.

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enonevets
After seeing this comment and the reference to RIP Medical Debt, I got curious
and was Googling around about this and came across this article:
[https://blog.credit.com/2016/06/john-oliver-follow-
up-146870...](https://blog.credit.com/2016/06/john-oliver-follow-up-146870/)

Looks like there are some questions that still needs to be answered about
whether this is necessary and if there are still consequences (like tax) for
doing so.

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intopieces
Is it true that in the US that medical bills don't impact your credit if you
are making payments -- even $1/month? If so, I don't quite understand why
people would go bankrupt from medical bills. Am I misunderstanding somehow?

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dallbee
My experience has been that the hospital sets up the monthly payment amount
(sometimes with varying plan options). You can't partially pay, and the
payment amount is a simple ($total / plan term). Paying $1 isn't really an
option.

The last medical bill my family had was something like $3500 and the longest
term the hospital offered was 6 months, at $580/mo.

I'm sure they're not all the same, but I could certainly see an unexpected
$580/mo being able to cripple a family living paycheck to paycheck.

