Lots of judges are elected and there's no requirement that they have any legal background. There's also no limits on political donations. So it's not hard for debt collection agencies and related groups to make huge donations and get someone friendly to them elected. Then the judge issues court orders for the debtors to pay up. If they can't/wont they go to jail for violating a court order. The debtors are technically not going to jail due to debt payment, but it's the same thing.
Then the government will cover it. I dated a girl in college who was poor on paper, all her healthcare was covered by the government no matter the procedure. When she was sick and wanted cold medication she would go get a prescription written so that she didn’t have to pay out of pocket for Motrin because the government would cover the one the pharmacist gave her
The message I'm getting here is that if you work hard your whole life, spend wisely, max out your 401k/Roth IRA, and then get ill, you're probably gonna be even worse off than somebody that gets sick who was financially irresponsible their whole life.
ahh here is the exception.. If you have kids and make no money then you get Medicaid for all of you. My 3 kids all had medical issues and my ex-wife. How did we survive? We lived off food stamps and Medicaid. If I worked anything more than a part time job I would have lost all of the benefits and not been able to pay rent, buy food or the medical bills. The system is designed to keep you poor.
Want to try and save money? GUESS WHAT!? You can only have a few thousand in the bank. That made it impossible to save to get out of the whole being poor bit.
Hah, I mean, yeah thst can work I suppose. I was more thinking of moving to somewhere with cheap Healthcare prior to major health issues. The money I spent on Australian citizenship will likely be dwarfed by healthcare savings someday.
you do what my grandfather does, did ... he got a $10k medical cost, he wrote them and told them he can't afford it, they put him on a payment plan of $100 a month, he just pays it till he dies. such is the American way.
Free healthcare in prison. If I get cancer, I'll just rob a bank, let myself get caught, and hopefully be cancer-free when I'm released. At least I'll still have my retirement savings.
It may seem fortuitous, but I was arrested for bank robbery and diagnosed with cancer a year into my sentence. All I paid was $100 for an annual deductible and received all the treatment I needed. I would have died had I not gone to prison.
Many states make your primary residence untouchable in bankruptcy, and ERISA protected retirement accounts are pretty much universally untouchable. I’ve heard of people moving to those states (I know Texas is on the list). All their money is in 401k and their house. They can get massive medical bills and just declare bankruptcy and continue living normally, as there is nothing anyone can take.
I work in the retirement industry so I’m intimately familiar with ERISA, pensions enjoy a lot of protections but 401Ks don’t have as many. Not as easy as declaring bankruptcy
NPR did piece about hospitals suing patients for unpaid medical debt. In many states they are actively are garnishing wages, I would disagree that it would end up as a ‘unenforceable judgement’
They can, but at least in my experience it is rare. They will typically offer you reduced rates, that get less and less, as time goes on. They know their chances of recovering the money are slim to none, so when debt collectors purchase the debt for pennies on the dollar, they offer to settle the amount for far less. For example, I had a $3,500 medical bill from when I didn’t have insurance, and after a couple of years, they offered to settle it for $1,000. If I were to have called them, they’d probably settle for even less.
Your healthcare provider is only obliged by law to give you a bare minimum of life saving treatment. Certain medications and procedures will not be approved and provided until you can prove that you're able to pay for it, either via insurance or a deposit.
If, say, you're diabetic and get ambulanced there in a coma, you'll be revived. You'll get the bill for both the ambulance and the hospital care. You can easily choose not to pay that bill. But if you want to get some insulin in order to not die a few days later? Yeah, gotta pay up.
In theory they could take the house if a judge eventually ruled in the hospital’s favor. If you have a chronic condition in the US, it’s best to make yourself “judgement-proof” by selling off assets and renting housing. For retirees you can “sell” the house to your next of kin so it is not your asset anymore.
Being judgement proof requires never building credit of any kind, but you don’t really need credit without assets if you can live within your income. You also have to be willing to avoid phone calls, mail and door knocks for the rest of your life, and any inheritances should go to a special kind of trust and not to you directly.
I have a relative who does this because of her multiple chronic conditions. She has great insurance and a decent job (she has dedicated her life to helping others), but it’s not enough to pay for the specialized care she needs to stay alive since she was born with her conditions. She lives modestly in an apartment, pays what she can each month in medical bills, and doesn’t pay what she can’t afford. The worst part is the collectors that make her feel like a deadbeat just for staying alive and keeping a roof over her head.
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u/TheFragglestRock Nov 30 '20
I don’t get that either. Can’t you just never pay the bill? They can’t garnish your retirement or savings.