#medical debt

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Legendary U Washington bookseller Duane Wilkins is drowning in medical debt

Nearly every sf writer who's ever toured the west coast knows Duane - he's the encyclopedically knowledgeable sf buyer for the U Washington Bookseller, who has organized some of the best sf signings in Seattle history. He's a force of nature.

He's also broke. A two-week hospital stay left him drowning in medical debt - despite being insured! - and now he's being threatened by a collection agency.

Now, Duane is forced into participating in one of the most barbaric of contemporary American rituals, fundraising to cover his medical debt. He's raised $6k of the $10k he needs (I just pitched in $100).

If you can afford to help out someone who's done so much for our community, please kick Duane whatever you can spare.

#science fiction #medical debt #barbarism #crowdfunding

[the-cimmerians]

Vice President Kamala Harris announced this week that the Biden administration is looking to lessen the burden medical debt has on people by purging it from their credit report. This means that even if people have piles of medical debt — one in five Americans say they do — it’s not going to affect their ability to get a mortgage or a car loan. So they will at least have a place to rest their head and a car they can drive to work every day while paying off their medical bills.

Via AP:

Harris said that would make it easier for them to obtain an auto loan or a home mortgage. Roughly one in five people report having medical debt. The vice president said the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is beginning the rulemaking process to make the change. The agency said in a statement that including medical debt in credit scores is problematic because “mistakes and inaccuracies in medical billing are common.” “Access to health care should be a right and not a privilege,” Harris told reporters in call to preview the action. “These measures will improve the credit scores of millions of Americans so that they will better be able to invest in their future.”

It only seems fair that high medical bills for an emergency or serious illness shouldn’t affect one’s credit rating anyway. It’s not like we’re talking about someone irresponsibly dropping several grand at Versace and then never paying off the credit card bill. Fifty-seven percent of Americans could not afford a surprise $1000 emergency, so the inability to pay off massive amounts of medical debt is hardly a fair reflection of an inclination to default on normal payments — payments you can budget for — on something like a mortgage or auto loan. “Way to be irresponsible by getting cancer, lady! You should definitely be punished for that by not being able to find any place to live!” seems pretty harsh, no?

#us politics #health care #medical debt #Wonkette #Robyn Pennacchia

[socialjusticeinamerica]

👏

#Dems deliver #medical debt

[liberalsarecool]

Voting matters. #KatieHobbs

Republicans will NEVER forgive student or medical debts of individuals. NEVER.

They truly have no idea of the meaning of forgiveness. Their Christianity has no virtues.

MAGA put Betsy DeVos, a person who personally benefits from student debt, in charge of education.

The difference in parties is staggering.

#arizona #medical debt #student debt #vote blue

[sophiaslittleblog]

Hay guys. I’m $6,500 in medical/personal debt. I had surgery this past September to remove fibroids from my uterus and my insurance refused to cover multiple things. So I changed the uncovered items to my credit card. Any help will go towards my medical/personal debt. Funds can also be sent to $SophiaChes, PayPal- [email protected] and my venmo Sophia-Chester-1. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

#boost #GoFundMe #help #medical debt

[odinsblog]

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs plans to cancel $2 billion in medical debt for up to 1 million residents. This is the biggest medical debt cancellation proposal in the country. The Governor plans to use $30 million in federal funds to buy and cancel the debt with RIP Medical Debt.

At least two other states — Connecticut and New Jersey — have moved to erase medical debt owed by their residents, in addition to a growing number of municipal and county governments across the nation.

(continue reading)

#politics #katie hobbs #medical debt #rip medical debt #healthcare #arizona

[ralfmaximus]

Do you live in Connecticut? Do you have a lot of medical debt?

Do you make less than $59K per year?

Well, good news!

The state is partnering with a nonprofit organization that buys debt at the same discount price at which debt collectors buy it, and will be leveraging $6.5 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds to get rid of $1 billion in medical debt. Who is eligible? Residents whose income is less than 400% of the federal poverty line (so $58,320 for individuals, $124,800 for a family of four, etc.) and anyone whose medical debt is more than 5 percent of their annual income.

What a superb use of funds earmarked by Biden for COVID assistance. Every state should do this.

#connecticut #medical debt #2024

[batboyblog]

Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs uses 30 million dollars in funds given to the state by President Biden's American Rescue Plan Act to cancel medical debt for a million Arizonans.

Since medical debt is often sold for pennies on the dollar $30 million can be used to buy and cancel 1.5 to 2 billion dollars worth of debt.

Link

#debt #medical debt #arizona #Democrats #debt relief #Joe Biden #Katie Hobbs #politics #us politics

[wildhannimal]

Before you pay that not-covered hospital bill:

I want to take a min to spread awareness for the No Surprises Act after noticing a reddit post earlier.

This protection for patients just popped up in the past couple years, and the one major downside is that it's up to the patients to speak up to make use of it, but not everyone knows what it is.

"If you have private health insurance, these new protections ban the most common types of surprise bills. If you’re uninsured or you decide not to use your health insurance for a service, under these protections, you can often get a good faith estimate of the cost of your care up front, before your visit."

Consumer fact sheet

Typically, health insurance companies will help pay for bills from "in-network" providers, AKA their VIP inner circle gang turf. They won't help pay if you get medical care from another gang's henchmen (out of network).

This means that sometimes, a person would go to the hospital, which they knew had been covered by their insurance before, so they expect it's going to be relatively affordable. But they didn't know that multiple medical "gangs" were working in the same hospital. Their anesthesiologist, for example, was from a different gang. That specialist was out of network even though the surgeon and nurses were all in network.

Boom. Big bill for thousands of dollars and their insurance refuses to help pay it.

But now we have this law! The No Surprises Act means that insurance companies need to cover "surprise" expenses (under certain conditions).

If you don't have health insurance, hospitals and clinics need to give you an accurate quote before you get services, then foot the bill if they were too far off the mark.

The Fact Sheet section of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services have some wonderful user-friendly resources for you about health insurance and how this act works.

Keep in mind that Medicare and government-run programs always have weird rules for everything, so you might have different (yet similar) protections through those programs.

If you have a medical bill that wasn't covered by insurance and you think it might count as a surprise bill, please check out your rights and consider fighting it instead of letting it become a stressful expense or debt you can't repay.

Go here to start figuring things out for your situation:

Health insurance companies have way, waaaaay too much power over our lives. We need every drop of protection we can get - but it only counts as much as we can understand and use those protections!

#health insurance #medical bills #life tips #personal finance #medical debt #hannimal thoughts #no surprise act #surprise bill

[thundergrace]

September 21, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris said Thursday that the Biden administration is taking the first steps toward removing medical bills from people’s credit scores, which could improve ratings for millions of people.

Harris said that would make it easier for them to obtain an auto loan or a home mortgage. Roughly one in five people report having medical debt. The vice president said the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is beginning the rulemaking process to make the change.

The agency said in a statement that including medical debt in credit scores is problematic because “mistakes and inaccuracies in medical billing are common.”

Apart from the implementation of credit scores being kind of arbitrary and at least vaguely racist, it doesn't make any sense to put medical debt on there when the idea is that if you have bad credit, you're irresponsible or unreliable because you don't pay your bills or pay back your debt.

Needing medical care is not a debt you voluntarily incur, so how is it reflective of your spending habits or character when you can't pay it back?

#medical debt #what an absurd term

[reasonsforhope]

Toledo City Council just approved a plan to turn $1.6 million in public dollars into as much as $240 million in economic stimulus, targeted at some of the Ohio metro’s most vulnerable residents.

“It’s really going to help people put food on the table, help them pay their rent, help them pay their utilities,” says Toledo City Council Member Michele Grim, who led the way for the measure. “Hopefully we can prevent some evictions.”

The strategy couldn’t be simpler: It works by canceling millions in medical debt.

Working with the New York City-based nonprofit RIP Medical Debt, the City of Toledo and the surrounding Lucas County are chipping in $800,000 each out of their federal COVID-19 recovery funds from the American Rescue Plan Act.

The combined $1.6 million in funding is enough for RIP Medical Debt to acquire and cancel up to $240 million in medical debt owed by Lucas County households that earn up to 400% of the federal poverty line.

“It could be more than a one-to-100 return on investment of government dollars,” Grim says. “I really can’t think of a more simple program for economic recovery or a better way of using American Rescue Plan dollars, because it’s supposed to rescue Americans.”

How It Works

Under the RIP Medical Debt model, there is no application process to cancel medical debt. The nonprofit negotiates directly with local hospitals or hospital systems one-by-one, purchasing portfolios of debt owed by eligible households and canceling the entire portfolio en masse.

“One day someone will get a letter saying your debt’s been canceled,” Grim says. It’s a simple strategy for economic welfare and recovery.

RIP Medical Debt was founded in 2014 by a pair of former debt collection agents, and since inception it has acquired and canceled more than $7.3 billion in medical debt owed by 4.2 million households — an average of $1,737 per household...

Local Governments Get Involved

The partnership with Toledo and Lucas County is the third instance of the public sector funding RIP Medical Debt to cancel debt portfolios.

Earlier this year, in the largest such example yet, the Cook County Board of Commissioners approved a plan to provide $12 million in ARPA funds for RIP Medical Debt to purchase and cancel an estimated $1 billion in medical debt held by hospitals across Cook County, which includes Chicago.

“Governments contract with nonprofits all the time for various social interventions,” Sesso says.

“This isn’t really that far-fetched or different from that. I would say between five and 10 other local governments have reached out just since the Toledo story came out.”

What's the Deal with Medical Debt?

An estimated one in five households across the U.S. have some amount of medical debt, and they are disproportionately Black and Latino, according to the U.S. Census Bureau...

Acquiring medical debt is relatively cheap: hospitals that sell medical debt portfolios do so for just pennies on the dollar, usually to investors on the secondary market.

The purchase price is so low because hospitals and debt buyers alike know that medical debt is the hardest form to collect...

The amount of debt canceled for any given household has ranged from $25 all the way up to six-figure amounts. Under IRS regulations, debts canceled under RIP Medical Debt’s model do not count as taxable income for households...

Massive Expansion Coming Up

After not one but two donations from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, totaling $80 million, RIP Medical Debt is planning for expansion.

It’s using a portion of those dollars to create an internal revolving line of credit to expand to places where it can find willing sellers before it has found willing funders.

The internal line of credit means the nonprofit now has new, albeit still limited, flexibility to acquire debt portfolios from hospitals first, then begin raising private or public dollars locally to replenish the line of credit later and make those funds available for other locations.

“People often ask, do you only work with nonprofit hospitals, or do you work with for-profit hospitals? And I’m like, I just want to get the debt, regardless of who created the debt. If it’s out there, I want it,” Sesso says.

Fundamentally, they are not solving the issue of medical debt, but easing its pressure from as many lives as possible — while also upping the pressure on lawmakers and the healthcare industry.

“We’re intentionally taking the stories of the individuals whose debt we have resolved, and putting their stories out into the world with intention in a way that tries to push and create more of that pressure to fundamentally solve the problem,” she says.

-via GoodGoodGood, 4/6/23

#toledo #ohio #chicago #cook county #new york #medical debt #healthcare #healthcare access #united states #us politics #debt crisis #debt relief #hospital #nonprofit #good news #hope

[actingwithportals]

Disabled queer person in financial need, please signal boost

Heyo, for folks who don't know I'm Awpie and I'm in a bit of a bind. I'm a blind mentally ill queer person without a job or a college degree, getting by pretty much solely on SSA. Over the past couple of months my cat Tiso (pictured below) has been in and out of the hospital with struvite crystals in his bladder, creating blockages and putting his life in serious danger. He is back home now and on a new prescription diet that will hopefully prevent this from ever happening again, but between the two separate instances of urinary blockages and needing to be kept in the hospital for up to 72 hours each stay while the vets had him hooked up to a catheter, I have accrued a lot of medical debt.

[ID: Photo of a large fluffy black cat lying down on a futon with blue sheets and a red fleece blanket. His green eyes are wide and looking directly at the camera. End ID]

Between my parents and I we were able to ensure he got the medical care he needed when he needed it, but it has left us with some very large bills that are going to eventually need to be paid off. Both of my parents are elderly and also surviving only on SSA, and between my mother caring for my ailing father and my inability to secure a stable job, these debts are putting us in a really tight situation. At the same time, I have also been attempting to save up funds to take a trip back home at the end of the year to visit my parents and spend time with them one last time before my father's health completely fails. I don't normally like to do this, but we could really use some help.

If you're able to help us out, even just $5, you can find my PP information listed below. And if you don't want to donate but would still like to help out somehow, you can find information about my art commissions I currently have available here and here.

I would greatly appreciate folks helping me share this around, even if you aren't able to donate. Thanks for reading this far 💜

PP

$0/$7,100

#fundraiser #mutual aid #medical debt #art commissions #signal boost

[savage-rhi]

I have a doctor's appointment coming up that's going to cost $339 out of pocket after insurance.

I have crochet scarves and a shawl/scarf I'm selling to try to put a dent in the price. They're comfortable and made with love.

Each one costs $50.00 + shipping (tb calculated).

**At this time, I can't ship outside the US. The shipping fee may be waived for folks in the states depending on location.

**I don't mind commissions. If you want something in particular, let's talk.

**I charge based on material costs and my time. My time is valuable most of all cause I'm disabled.

**Please message me if you'd like to purchase one

Thanks for looking 💙

#crochet #crochet scarf #triangle scarf #crochet goods #medical debt #medical bill #art #creator #lgbtq #fibromyalgia #I'm not the best model in the world but I'm trying #been sweating bullets over this appointment #its a serious one that i need about my thyroid #and i cant go any longer putting it off #serious bit aside #am i the only one that stitches intention when i crochet? #i literally put my love and energy into things like this #so people can take some good with them #yeah yeah its sappy but its my truth #chronic pain #chronic illness #disability

[liberalsarecool]

No other country lives in fear of medical debt.

#medicare for all #m4a #medical debt

[solmarillion]

hello, i'm an autistic lesbian with bipolar disorder. about a month ago during thanksgiving weekend i had to go to the ER due to low blood pressure and chronic gastrointestinal issues. i nearly passed out several times. all of this happened because i was home alone- my parents left me alone thanksgiving weekend to watch their dogs while they went to disney world.

now i'm in medical debt. my insurance refuses to cover the needed amount and i can't afford the remaining cost. please help by donating to my ko-fi here.

#donations #signal boost #medical debt #autistic lesbian #actually autistic #queer artist #bipolar disorder

[sniperct]

Really didn't want it to come to this, but between moving, steph's eyeballs and the fact several hospital visits are now in collections, we're going to be rolling with a gofundme, probably going up (officially, as we created one when December went to shit but didn't publicize it as...well we're stubborn) tomorrow or Sun. Primarily to take care of some of the debt in collections and helping with the exorbitant cost of preventing my wife from going blind (and I have expensive physical therapy for a frozen shoulder on top of it), but we've also had to drain what we had in savings just to get a new place to live and I still have to figure out a solution for my work space.

Long story short, we lived in my mother-in-law's house, and she passed away. We're forced to sell the house to cover her debts and the mortgage and I have no idea what if anything would be left after being split 3 ways between three sisters (and we're hoping to sock most of that away towards buying a house later, as ironically it's so much cheaper to pay a mortgage than rent plus I’m so tired of living at the whims of other people). Finding a place has been absolutely horrible, and we have to pay 2800 for a deposit PLUS first month's rent. We'd thought it was just the 2800 to move in, but also paying first month's rent basically means we have no money to pay for help moving, (not even to rent a truck).

So anything that could help with the immediate needs of getting through May with less difficulty would be welcome as the first month is going to be tight.

https://ko-fi.com/sniperct https://paypal.me/sniperct  (pls ignore birth name lol)

This is just hospital bills, this doesn’t include what we owe for the eye procedures as I still need to dig out that bill. It’s at least 3000 for the eyes alone.

ETA:

Thank you so much for sharing everyone!

Someone found the gofundme somehow last night and donated, which is amazing and I could kiss them.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-us-survive-medical-debt-and-moving

#idk how to tag this kind of thing #fundraising #?? #medical debt