You Fools!

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And...once more....

what on earth are you referring to?

I've known people who DIED because they couldn't afford treatment, or been turned over to a collection agency and had to file for bankruptcy and sell over their house and car because they couldn't pay medical bills.

Are you just trolling, or are you willing to share with us details of this free healthcare you've been alluding to for two or three posts?

If you go to an Emergency Room in extremis, the law in most states requires that the hospital gives you treatment. They cannot (by law) turn you away. If you cannot pay the bill then the state compensates the hospital. It works like the assigned risk pool for insurance companies. Anyone who is in need of emergency health care can get if free, if they are unable to pay.

ruveyn

How are the odds of surviving at the emergency room? A considerable risk of death or worse than death, which can be avoided by medical treatment and medicine, which the idea is all people having access to, regardless of their economic situation. Medicine and medical care is ideally, a right for people to have easy acces to, and IMHO, between food and medicine, medicine considered an undiscriminated right is a good ideal, while for food, you would have to work for it. I don't think Obama's policy goes that far though, and no, this isn't necessarily socialism nor comunism either, as I am certain few right-wingers claim.

However, I know you just don't care.

In any case, Bethie said she is benefiting from the healthcare's plan already, so it seems that it is currently working and benefiting people of low income and resources, thus Obama's plan seems to be working in that regard, so I don't see much of your argument regarding "You Fools!" given this, not all aspects revolves around ruveyn's perspective, but other people in different socioeconomic situations as well, so I hardly think she is a fool, for being glad of having access to this medical care plan.

Last edited by greenblue on 15 Sep 2010, 7:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't believe this is accurate. The state and federal governments compensate the hospital for a *portion* of the costs incurred by medicare or medicaid patients, but the state has no obligation to make sure that the hospital does not lose money due to delinquincies. EDs are consistently in the red in pretty much every hospital where they exist, which led ~ 10 -15 years ago to the closure of many EDs and even many hospitals.

It is true that EDs are required to treat and that hospitals cannot dump patients, but if the patient does not pay the portion of the cost not covered by medicare then the hospital ends up eating the cost of caring for that patient.

oh YES they most certainly CAN or at least drive one to bankrupcy.
medical expenses are the leading cause of personal bankrupcy in this country.

So the other customers pay more than they otherwise would. Which means insurance rates are highter than they would be otherwise. In any case the costs are distributed.

ruveyn

The costs may be distributed, but it is not done by either the state or the federal governments. And I do not think that 'clinic' costs are the entirety, or even the majority, of what is driving health care cost increases; we have had just as stringent anti-dumping and mandated-care laws for decades without this severity of crisis.

I've never been in bankruptcy myself and, in fact, I've actively discouraged my wife from going that route in regards to our medical expenses. Compared to most, our expenses really are nothing ($30,000+). We have every intention of paying it, but it's just a matter of when and how.

But they CANNOT force you to pay, and bankruptcy is but one ticket out of your medical bills.

Medical care is considered an unsecured debt. If you can't possibly meet their demands when they want you to, if they can't accept, say, $50 a month, and the collectors are calling and threatening legal action, they leave you little choice. Hang in there for 3 to 4 months, walk down to your nearest family law attorney, and file a Chapter 7. You won't have to pay one red cent.

Now, realistically, collections agencies and hospitals know this and will do all they can to keep this from happening. Start throwing around terminology like "unsecured," Chapter 7, and Chapter 13 and the collectors will refer you to their supervisors, with whom you'll become fast friends and the whole tone of the conversation will change dramatically.

I'm not a lawyer, but I know enough about the process I could prepare a bankruptcy for you and file it with the court (I used to prepare and file bankruptcies for people when I was between colleges). Chapter 7 is what creditors fear the most. It's a "clean slate" kind of bankruptcy in which you partially liquidate your assets to satisfy secured debts (like cars, houses, things like that which you can do without) and unsecured debts get flushed down the toilet. Gone forever. Chapter 13 covers secured and unsecured debt and is common when you're about to lose your home to foreclosure. More people file Chapter 13. It puts them on a payment plan to make them current on secured debts and allows SOME money to go to unsecured debts if the money is available. Clients have up to 5 years before they are discharged from bankruptcy and absolutely must not take on any more unsecured debt. They have to maintain a strict budget and only live on their income. The problem with chapter 13 is too many clients get used to living under the rules that IF they make it to the point they are discharged from bankruptcy, they end up applying for credit cards and so-called "pay-day" advance loans that they end up right back where they started. What is truly sad is many of these people can't afford food without unsecured debt that they constantly stay under bankruptcy protection. And THEN you have the welfare mommas with 13+ children at home. I even remember one particularly matriarchal family with a (literal) "Big Momma" who stayed in bankruptcy and eventually got one of her own daughters to file Chapter 13. I heard that they had at least 8 children between the two of them living in the same house. I actually met the chain-smoking daughter once--she had so much smoke in her/on her I got a nicotine high just from talking to her without a cigarette being lit. It seemed to me their brains were fried, too, and there are just certain questions I know better than to ask. My understanding was they were both "disabled" (yeah, right) and some of the children were mentally handicapped (I wonder why). People like this have no intention of getting out of bankruptcy. What is sad is that there are really sweet people out there who deserve to get out of it and become dependent on it.

There used to be a word for what became of people in that situation: "Slaves." My wife and I are working hard to "buy our freedom." We aren't taking the easy way out. I believe those kinds of legal protections are only for extreme emergencies, not the casual "I don't feel like paying my credit card bill."

Seriously, filing Chapter 7 is NOT paying your hospital bill. It's just the opposite. They can't force you to pay. If you end up in trouble, just call your lawyer, set aside enough money for the filing fee, and watch your hospital bill go up in smoke.

NOTHING that is almost more money than i've ever seen. i hardly know anybody with that kind of money.



but they can force one into debt for the rest of one's life, unless one win the lotto or some other big windfall, or go bankrupt. my late father had collectors after him for $80k smackers that he had no way of paying off before he died. they never even sent him a bill directly, he only heard from the collectors. at least in his case, in his last declining years, medical providers went directly to collections, with the presumption that if you don't have proper insurance [not VA or Medicaire/Medicaid], you have nothing to pay them with in the first place, so they will wring it out of your carcass like blood out of a turnip. he was VA but bush outsourced much VA medical work to private contractors, and these outside contractors had to be wrestled to the mat in order to make them accept medicaire's/VA's relatively meager payments. i'd much rather be dead than burdened with a lifetime of unpayable debt whether from the medical provider directly or from the bankrupcy lawyer. i've known medical debtors who had their money taken right out of their bank accounts, pay garnished from their then-drained-dry paychecks before it even got to them. you may call me trailer trash if it makes you feel better, but i surely won't live long enough to pay back [something like] $30k large.



lawyers don't work for peanuts, but often charge more than the cost of a new car. every lawyer i ever was unfortunate enough to have to deal with, wanted their duckies UP FRONT. no credit whatsoever.



who has the money to pay a filing fee, much less a lawyer? not i. one will end up having to pay through the nose to somebody or another, either to a lawyer or a hospital green eyeshades type. why are so many people so enthusiastic about perpetuating this inhumane [and unsustainable] non-system? just what is so good about it?

No matter how many times you repeat this, it doesn't become any more true.

What program are you referring to, and why is it that so many people die every year because they can't afford health care if this is in place?

You've said nothing so far about HEALTH CARE, merely that hospitals are obligated to treat you in an EMERGENCY.

I'll ask what the filing fee is, but a typical Chapter 7 is not really that much. If you're going to a lawyer to file a Chap. 7, the lawyer knows good and well you're there precisely because you DON'T have the money.

What you do is you just flat out STOP paying your debts so you CAN afford your filing fee. Let's just say the fee is $300 (I'll check on this later). If I lived in a two-bedroom apartment and both my wife and myself worked in fast food, we'd make rent, keep the kids fed, AND still have enough left over for a filing fee. Bankruptcy is simply a way for a person to say "I'm in trouble, I can't do it." And BECAUSE you can't do it, you stop immediately, hire a lawyer with what you HAVE, and everything else just goes away.

Chapter 7 liquidates those things you have but don't need, like extra cars, motorcycles, boats, lake houses, things like that which you have loans on but can surrender to the court (and to the creditors). Typically, for example, if you try to take your car back, you won't get NEARLY enough back for it to pay off your car loan. By simply surrendering the property, you no longer have responsibility for it. You wanna repo my car? Here. Take it.

Credit cards? Medical bills? Hasta la bye-bye.

The only people in the system who are truly stupid are creditors who keep loaning to these people, and those are your payday loan and credit cards. Payday loans are horribly deceptive, and I can't understand why they're even still in business. Their tactics nowadays involve "casual conversations" in which they ask about what kind of car you have, where you live, and so on. What YOU don't see is they're making notes of everything you own, even gifts, jewelry, engagement rings, and so forth that you have within your family, and they will list that stuff as collateral on the loan application. So when you can't pay back 33% interest on your little weekend getaway, they will come get your stuff. If they're diligent about it, there won't be a thing the courts can do. But these kind of lenders are also negligent with their paperwork. I personally know of some lawyers who purposefully omit exemptions from bankruptcy documents because they know certain creditors refuse to file their documentation correctly. Purely on technicalities, these people lose all claim to collateral that haven't been exempted by the courts purely because they're too stupid to file their papers!! ! Free widescreen plasma TV, anybody?

Hospitals, though, are the real losers because they can't turn anyone away, and they can't force money out of you if you don't have it. What they CAN do is go to court and get a wage order. But at the same time, they have to give notice about it. So you still have time to get your bankruptcy filed, even if you wait too long.

Ruveyn is also right about how rates have to increase to cover all the deadbeats. Sad but true. So somewhere down the line, SOMEONE is going to have to push the reset button on the med system so that it is more equitable to more people. There's no reason why my family shouldn't qualify for Medicaid. Supposedly we make to much money, though too much still happens to be less than $24,000/yr (before taxes). There's another reason, I think, but I'll remain silent about that because I might unintentionally come across as being hateful.

Auntblabby: Don't worry about being trailer trash. We DO live in a trailer. It's a long way from the spacious 5-bedroom we DID have. But the advantage to living out here with the rest of the scum is everyone minds their own business and they don't ask questions. See my posts about DHS and CPS for how I feel about that. $30,000 used to be a year's salary for me. I MIGHT pull in half that now. If I'm lucky. I have two fairly reliable sources of income and one that's a little shaky, plus any extra gigs I might get like parties, fundraisers, etc. So I know for sure I can get around $800-$900 a month, MAYBE a little extra if I get good work. When I say $30,000 being nothing, I'm thinking about parents I'd see in the NICU with my daughter who have children that will never leave, and THEY will end up with nearly $250,000 in debt--and those are people who aren't doing much better than we are. Just so you know, I have more than $50,000 just in student loans. I ask myself all the time "how the f*ck did we get here?" We didn't go crazy with credit cards. One for $20,000 when our son was born, which we paid off. One for about $3,000 when times got tough (paid). Another for a little less than $3,000 for business related expenses, which I'll have paid off in another month or two. We have one or two things like that besides that we haven't figured out yet, and SOMEHOW we'll figure out how to knock out the big one.

Bethie: there's no government program that allows you free emergency room care UNLESS you have Medicaid/Medicare, and that will only go so far. Bankruptcy laws consider hospital bills to be unsecured debt, that is, they can't come after you for collateral. Those debts are cancelled under Chapter 7 of the federal bankruptcy laws. Chapter 13 protects property used as collateral (usually homes and modes of transportation) and will make small payments to unsecured debt over the life of the bankruptcy. Depending on the jurisdiction, there could be state programs which pick up the hospital bill for those who are unable to pay, but I'm not aware of any that do.

You can't be FORCED into bankruptcy if you don't want to, but it IS an option that is available. And by going that route, you won't be paying much on hospital bills if any at all.

The only problem is that will be reported to credit bureaus. So if you emerge from bankruptcy, you don't HAVE to pay those debts. What you CAN do is say, "look, I did what I had to do, but I want to clear this up. I'll give you what I can, and if I win the lotto, I'll make it good." Generally speaking, it takes a good 5 years before any REAL lender (not counting credit cards) will be willing to trust you. By then, though, if you went through bankruptcy, you SHOULD have learned your lesson.

auntblabby: I'm sorry to hear about your father's problems. Sounds like you all handled it the best way you could. I'm the kind of person if you asked me how much my fees would be to do work for you and I knew you didn't have much, I'd just ask for whatever is in your pocket at the time. I also have a small clientele, among whom are people that don't like paying my fees. Come on... You send your kid to a fancy private school. Don't tell me you can't cough up an extra $60.

Too bad the medical establishment can't work the same way. But I guess then we'd live in a perfect world, wouldn't we?

It seems the Barak Hussein Obama has done one thing that meets with popularity. However, let's do like the leftmedia did for Bush and ignore anything Barak has done right and focus on only what he's done wrong? Come on? Equal Opportunity whining anyone? There ought to be no double standard for Democrats to benefit from.

Actually, Kieth Olbermann and Rachel Maddow on the very left leaning MSNBC have been critical of Obama in regards to continued use of rendition, and the very fact that Guantanamo is still in operation. Not to mention that he had watered down health care reform in order to placate Republicans and blue dog Democrats for the sake of bi-partinism.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Every media outlet I know—including explicitly left-wing ones—regularly slam Obama. The right-wing, however, would never dare to criticize a Republican President.

And none of the main-stream left media would outright lie about a Republican president like some of the guys on Faux News do about Obama.