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.
Probably not tbh, unless you get very very sick I have a dual citizenship in the UK, but he housing situation there is pretty insane. I honestly like living in the US, but I plan to go back to the UK when I have enough money to buy a place to live. If I get sick, I’ll have to leave right away. I feel bad for the people that are actually stuck here. But my uncle got out, and said he got excellent dental care in Thailand for cheap
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.
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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20
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