A Viral Post on Social Media Will Clear the Medical Debt of Strangers (msn.com) 221
"To celebrate my life, I've arranged to buy up others' medical debt and then destroy the debt," reads a posthumous tweet posted Tuesday after the death of 38-year-old Casey McIntyre.
The Washington Post explains... McIntyre, who served as publisher at Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin Random House, was diagnosed in 2019 and proceeded through treatment without taking on debt, [husband Andrew Rose] Gregory told The Washington Post. But many fellow cancer patients she met were in more precarious financial positions, Gregory added. "We were both so keenly aware that Casey had great health insurance through Penguin Random House," said Gregory, 41. "Casey had no medical debt...."
About nine months before McIntyre died, her husband came across a video online about members of a North Carolina church who purchased nearly $3.3 million of local residents' medical debt for $15,048 in a "debt jubilee," a historical reference to ancient stories about personal debts being canceled at regular intervals. The couple chose to make monthly donations to RIP Medical Debt, the same organization that partnered with the North Carolina churchgoers. The nonprofit organization aims to abolish medical debt "at pennies on the dollar," according to its website. For every $100 donated, the company relieves $10,000 of medical debt. As of Saturday, nearly $200,000 had been donated to RIP Medical Debt in McIntyre's memory, which would wipe out approximately $20 million of unpaid medical bills. [By Sunday afternoon it had risen to over $334,000...]
Allison Sesso, president and chief executive of RIP Medical Debt, said her organization found out about McIntyre's case after McIntyre's posthumous social media post went viral. Sesso said the pace of donations was record-setting for her charity. "What an incredible gesture to the world as you're exiting," Sesso told The Post. "This final act of generosity is blowing up. The amount that they're raising and the rate at which this has gone is not something that we're used to."
McIntyre's post on X has now received 65,400 likes — and 3,086 reposts.
The Washington Post explains... McIntyre, who served as publisher at Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin Random House, was diagnosed in 2019 and proceeded through treatment without taking on debt, [husband Andrew Rose] Gregory told The Washington Post. But many fellow cancer patients she met were in more precarious financial positions, Gregory added. "We were both so keenly aware that Casey had great health insurance through Penguin Random House," said Gregory, 41. "Casey had no medical debt...."
About nine months before McIntyre died, her husband came across a video online about members of a North Carolina church who purchased nearly $3.3 million of local residents' medical debt for $15,048 in a "debt jubilee," a historical reference to ancient stories about personal debts being canceled at regular intervals. The couple chose to make monthly donations to RIP Medical Debt, the same organization that partnered with the North Carolina churchgoers. The nonprofit organization aims to abolish medical debt "at pennies on the dollar," according to its website. For every $100 donated, the company relieves $10,000 of medical debt. As of Saturday, nearly $200,000 had been donated to RIP Medical Debt in McIntyre's memory, which would wipe out approximately $20 million of unpaid medical bills. [By Sunday afternoon it had risen to over $334,000...]
Allison Sesso, president and chief executive of RIP Medical Debt, said her organization found out about McIntyre's case after McIntyre's posthumous social media post went viral. Sesso said the pace of donations was record-setting for her charity. "What an incredible gesture to the world as you're exiting," Sesso told The Post. "This final act of generosity is blowing up. The amount that they're raising and the rate at which this has gone is not something that we're used to."
McIntyre's post on X has now received 65,400 likes — and 3,086 reposts.
How does that even work? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How does that even work? (Score:5, Insightful)
Medical debt is the most common reason for personal bankruptcies.
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Re: How does that even work? (Score:2)
Re: How does that even work? (Score:3)
Depends on the bankruptcy. Chapter 7 means you have nothing to satisfy the debt and it is all discharged. Chapter 11 means the courts can force your creditors to stop collecting while you come up with a structured payment solution. Usually some portion of debt is discharged in a chapter 11.
To answer OPs question, when you die the bankruptcy terminates and your estate owes whatever remains to its creditors
Re: How does that even work? (Score:5, Informative)
Chapter 7 means you have nothing to satisfy the debt and it is all discharged. Chapter 11 means the courts can force your creditors to stop collecting while you come up with a structured payment solution. Usually some portion of debt is discharged in a chapter 11.
Half accurate on Chapter 7. Chapter 7 creates a "bankruptcy estate" that gains possession of all your non-exempt assets. These assets are sold and whatever money is raised is distributed to creditors. They get what they get and the rest is discharged (though, some debt, like student loans or criminal fines cannot be discharged).
Most consumer Chapter 7s are "no asset", meaning, there are no "non-exempt" assets. The list of what's "exempt" varies State by State, generally, all of your retirement accounts, a chunk of equity in your home, tools of the trade, small amounts of cash, those are all exempt and excluded from the estate. Some States have an unlimited homestead exemption, so you can, in theory, have a house worth millions of dollars and shield it from your bankruptcy estate or (occasionally) creditor judgments outside of bankruptcy. It's not for nothing that OJ Simpson chose to settle in Florida after he lost the civil suit.
Chapter 11 would not generally apply in a consumer case. Consumers do Chapter 13, which does function similarly to what you say, basically you take your income, exclude an amount for reasonable expenses (varies by state/locale) and the rest goes to your creditors over 36 to 60 months. Secured creditors (e.g., mortgage, car loan) are first in line and are usually made whole. Unsecured creditors (e.g., credit cards, medical debts) get between 0% and 100% of what they're owed, based on the amount of money paid into the plan vs. how much is owed, and how many secured claims are ahead of them in line.
Re: How does that even work? (Score:2)
Thank you for a thorough follow up!
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Re: How does that even work? (Score:2)
Maximum length of negative reports is 7 years, this includes bankruptcies. Except judgements which last for 10 years on your report and can be forever found in municipal court records
Re:How does that even work? (Score:4, Informative)
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So... if you declare bankruptcy, isn't the debt gone, or no? I don't know how bankruptcy works.
For more information, ask former President Trump, he declared bankruptcy on 3 casinos, 1 hotel and 2 casino holding companies:
How Many Casinos Did Donald Trump Bankrupt [celebmix.com]:
He reported bankruptcy of his three casinos in the early 90s when various places in the United States were going through tough times due to the Gulf War situation.
After that, he declared the Manhattan Hotel and two other casino holding companies to be bankrupt.
Donald Trump Owned Several Atlantic City Casinos That Went Bankrupt [yahoo.com]
By the early 1990s, the financial situation of Trump’s casino empire had become critical. Multiple bankruptcy filings ensued: the Trump Taj Mahal in 1991, followed by Trump Plaza and Trump Castle in 1992 and later Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts Inc. in 2004.
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So... if you declare bankruptcy, isn't the debt gone, or no? I don't know how bankruptcy works.
For more information, ask former President Trump, he declared bankruptcy on 3 casinos, 1 hotel and 2 casino holding companies
a bit surreal the lasting power trump has on some minds, with those who view him positively and with those who view him negatively.
Re:How does that even work? (Score:5, Informative)
No, it's not [washingtonpost.com].
Even the paper [cohealthinitiative.org] that everybody probably thinks of when they claim that doesn't say half of bankruptcies are caused by medical debt. The survey they rely on has that number at 29%, and the authors added in a LOT of other factors -- most notably "did this person lose income because of illness, either their own or a family member's" -- to get to the headline number of "medical bankruptcies". The flaws in their paper were legion, and better analyses (like the one mentioned in my first link) find something like an order of magnitude fewer medical bankruptcies.
Lots of others [nytimes.com] also criticize that 2005 paper:
Amy Finkelstein, a professor at M.I.T. and one of the authors, said the Warren paperâ(TM)s approach is akin to trying to find out how to be successful in business by interviewing big technology entrepreneurs about how they got their start. Such a study, she said, might lead to the conclusion that you need to drop out of college to succeed, even though most college dropouts do not become billionaires.
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Strawman, much?
I did not write that medical debt caused half of all bankruptcies, which is what that WP opinion piece article attempts to disprove.
That opinion piece quotes some research that ignores many, if not most cases where medical debt was a factor.
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No strawman at all. I, and the pieces I linked to, made it quite clear that income loss is a more common cause of bankruptcy than medical bills are. You, in contrast, have not cited any data or research on the subject.
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did this person lose income because of illness
I don't think I care if I go bankrupt because of debt or bankrupt because of lost income due to the medical system not getting me back to work in a reasonable time. In either case the medical system is broken.
The flaws in their paper were legion, and better analyses (like the one mentioned in my first link) find something like an order of magnitude fewer medical bankruptcies.
An order of magnitude fewer is still several orders of magnitude higher than other western countries. I don't call myself a pacifist because I *only* punched 20 people yesterday while someone else accused me of doing more.
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I would explain it to you but you are named after a bird.
Re: How does that even work? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: How does that even work? (Score:4, Interesting)
That's what lawyers are for. If she didn't consent to treatment, they didn't have any basis to bill her. Her insurance company should have told the hospital to pound sand.
Re: How does that even work? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: How does that even work? (Score:4, Interesting)
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You should probably move to a different state if it's legal in California to bill somebody for services they neither asked for nor used.
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But the bill for this visit was quite different than the others because the hospital was out-of-network with her health insurance plan, Cigna. The hospital billed Rodriquez $12,768. Cigna paid only $2,767, leaving her with a bill just over $10,000
When Dang first got her $20,243.71 bill, she turned to her health insurance plan, asking it to pay a higher portion of the fees. But the insurance denied that appeal, stating that it had already paid a reasonable fee to cover the services provided.
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Re: How does that even work? (Score:2)
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Re: How does that even work? (Score:2)
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Re: How does that even work? (Score:2)
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Re: How does that even work? (Score:2)
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Yeah who needs a credit rating anyway.
Once again showing you're not smarter than anyone here despite your username.
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If it was a ridiculous bill she should simply not pay it.
Or negotiate.
My spouse fell and had a head and back injury. The hospital bill was $60k.
After several months of back-and-forth negotiation, they reduced it to $8k, which was still high but not outrageously so.
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How does this work when the injured is unconscious? Do you guys have bracelets with your insurance plan?
This sounds seriously disfunctional, not to mention and insane...
it called drive by doctoring and you have to fight (Score:2)
it called drive by doctoring and you have to fight each bill on your own
Re: How does that even work? (Score:2)
Why not sue the rock climbing gym where she sustained an injury? They are liable and likely carry insurance. Those bills would 100% be covered by the gym. This story is likely missing parts and if not then your friend is an idiot who knowingly put herself into debt for a sob story
Re: How does that even work? (Score:2)
Re: How does that even work? (Score:2)
Those waivers arenâ(TM)t worth the paper they are printed on, liability lies with the owner of a property regardless of what happens, it is their option to demonstrate they are not at fault (eg. by showing you were reckless). Besides that fact, any ER has the duty to both treat you and provide you with costs and options regardless of your financial status. Health insurances are required by contract and law to cover out-of-network emergency services.
The only thing true about this story is that sheâ
Re: How does that even work? (Score:2)
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The hospital changed its policies in 2019.
Re: How does that even work? (Score:2)
Re: How does that even work? (Score:2)
Re: How does that even work? (Score:2)
You are missing the point. The gym has insurance. Suing the gym activates the gyms insurance. You sue to get the necessary reimbursement. If you do not wish to do this, you have your insurance (renters, umbrella, etc) subrogate your claim
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Gym freaked out and called ambulance and made her get in.
Nobody can "make" you get into an ambulance if you're conscious.
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You have never been made to do stuff while in a state of shock and pain and thus not thinking clearly?
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Why would you need a Trauma team for a suspected broken ankle ? One it's an Orthopaedic job and two it's not where near urgent or life threatening.
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Patients have a right to refuse treatment. A climbing gym can't make her get in an ambulance. Not the point, I know. :-)
That's ridiculous. That calls for a response to the hospital like "I hear you almost provided treatment. Here's my check for $0.00. I almost paid you for it."
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Got to the nearest hospital, seriously Zuckerberg Medical Center in SF, which does NOT contract with private insurance. She had no choice and was brought there. Month later she received a 120k bill for "activating the trauma surgeon". --
Isn't that what out of network coverage is for?
Re: How does that even work? (Score:2)
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Unless the patient signs something that refers to the hospital's chargemaster, they can't just charge what they like. Charges where there is no agreed price must be reasonable.
There was a podcast about this -- perhaps it was an episode of This American Life. It's changed now, but some years ago, hospitals often did not refer to or make the chargemaster available, which meant they could not enforce these outrageous bills.
re: broken medical system (Score:2)
Really, there's a problem with this on multiple levels with "emergency care". For example, it was pounded into our collective heads for years not to go to the emergency room for "non life-threatening issues". Use the Urgent Cares instead. Great! But not always feasible. For example? My daughter recently thought she'd broken her wrist. Gave it 24 hours or so and pain kept shooting up her arm so she finally decided we better get x-rays. Called every Urgent Care in the city and surrounding 3 cities. Only *one
Re: How does that even work? (Score:2)
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You can choose not to wrack up debt. Just die like a good 3rd world pleb of your treatable condition and you don't need to worry about medical debt. Presumably this is what the forefathers had in mind for land of the free.
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Yes, land of the free, home of the broke.
A common technique (Score:4, Insightful)
The only exception seems to be ambulance services. Those guys are relentless to the point where it's not uncommon for people with severe injuries or medical conditions to call an Uber or to drive themselves in. Debt collectors for ambulance services or legendary for being some of the worst loan sharks in the country. I think I might rather borrow from the mob.
As for why we can't seem to fix this it's because our private insurance companies don't need to exist but they make a ton of money so every time there is the slightest chance of us doing away with them they will spend any amount of money on advertising because there are fighting for their lives and because they can always just recoup the cost by raising premiums on people. Also to be blunt we give socialized medicine to old people in this country because the insurance companies don't want to have to insure them and you can count on every person over the age of 65 to come out and vote against giving healthcare to anyone under the age of 65... Although I think it's now 67 for anyone getting it now and are right wing party is already proposing raising it to 70 or 72. If they get their way you'll have to be 95 before you qualify for socialized medicine in America.
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Re:How does that even work? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Unless you're proposing paying cash for a house. Only rich people can do that, and rich people don't need to care about this stuff, because they're rich.
Let me get this straight (Score:3)
Re: How does that even work? (Score:2)
"Forgives it" means they will not collect on the debt. This usually does not remove the debt from your credit report (although the consumer has options to force it off the credit report).
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"Forgives it" means they will not collect on the debt. ...
For more information, ask Justice Clarence Thomas; he apparently knows all about getting a debt forgiven.
Most of Justice Thomas’ $267,000 loan for an RV seems to have been forgiven [apnews.com]
Re: How does that even work? (Score:4, Informative)
The big facts that you choose to ignore is that Justice Thomas did not do anything wrong ...
Having a debt forgiven can be considered a gift and, possibly, taxable income, and he didn't disclose it (among other things) on annual financial records. He did several things wrong -- things that any other federal judge would get fired, or at least reprimanded, for doing. Forgiving a debt is what was asked about and this is what happened with Thomas, so pretty much the same thing.
Re: How does that even work? (Score:2)
can be
This simple statement indicates there are situations where they CANNOT be. Ergo the rest of your comment is moot. Good day sir, if you want to enact change please write your elected official. Slashdot is of no use.
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They can submit a form to the credit agencies to have it fully removed.
It's just a paperwork process.
Re: How does that even work? (Score:2)
No. They are taking over the debt they are not a credit reporting company so they cannot change the status of the debt with consumer credit reports. They also cannot collect or put more negative marks on your credit report because again they are not a credit reporting company. The consumer can dispute the status of the negative credit marks which would force the holder to respond. The holder would no longer be responsible for the debt since the new owners are, that is right, not a credit reporting company.
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No, medical costs are crazy, you cannot always understand the costs up front, and even when you have insurance you can end up with surprise bills.
After about 90 days of no payments the hospital can sell you debt to a debt collector, now you owe someone else that will hound you endlessly and they want the full amount, not the pennies on the dollar they paid.
The really entertaining part is when you get a notice saying that a bill was sent to collections, and it's the first thing you've ever received from them, and it was never even sent to your insurance company, which would have paid the bill in full (deductible already paid for that year). The incompetence of medical billing is legendary.
Re: How does that even work? (Score:2)
No, it isnâ(TM)t easy to do that. Whoever told you that is lying. You have to make seriously poor decisions to get anywhere over 10k annually and if you make those decisions, you shouldnâ(TM)t be surprised.
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No, all you have to do is get sick. You should try reading medical bills sometimes. A 15 minute appointment with my regular doctor is $300. An ambulance ride literally down the block is over $1k (and I hear that's actually cheap). An MRI is $1500+. Going to the ER starts at $2k. My kid got bit by a snake, which thankfully turned out to be non-venomous. Antivenom was over $120,000.
Oh, and I used to work in a hospital where my family was also sometimes a patient. A bag of saline we paid 73 cents for i
Imagine... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Imagine... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Imagine... (Score:4, Insightful)
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A complete lie. Obviously you have no honor. You may also be too dumb to understand what a "progression" is. For example, to pay 45% income tax, you have to make more than 300k/Year in Germany. The absolute maximum income tax in Europe I was able to find is Finnland at 56% (again, only on the last portion). Your "80%" is a complete fabrication.
Re: Imagine... (Score:5, Informative)
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_That_ expensive? I pay half of that here in Europe. And it is a country with high medical cost. It is also one with mandatory health insurance, as in you cannot be uninsured. That is the only sane way to do it.
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They were two different groups, like I just told you, imbecile. Racism and GOP campaign strategy since the late '60s fused them at the hip.
No, fucknuts. It was a deliberate political strategy. Like I just told you. And the moment social programs became associated in their squirrelly little Johnny Reb brains with non-
It's broken in more than one way. (Score:2)
In America, hospitals cannot bill insurers more than they bill uninsured patients. They must charge the same. But insurers can use negotiating leverage of "we drive business to your hospital" to insist on contracts that give them significant discounts. Because of those discounts, the hospitals raise the rates (to compensate). Since they raised the rates for insurers, they must raise the rates for the uninsured too. That spiral ultimately results in rates that can completely destroy middle-class or lowe
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Conscious of its imperfections, I'd still choose the US system
Okay, let's run with this. Be specific about why you think the US system is so much better. While formulating your justification point out that Germany doesn't have a concept of medical debt, has better health outcomes, better life expectancy, better aged care, a better ranked health system over all and a more efficient one with significantly lower cost to achieve all of this per capita, all while being 100% socialised.
I'm just dying to hear why you think the USA is better. Or at least I would be if I lived
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I used to believe this, too, but weirdly most other similarly developed countries manage just fine.
And still, people fight healthcare tooth and nail (Score:5, Insightful)
The funny bit is that it's exactly the opposite in Europe. You'd rather get the US to repeal the second amendment than you find us agreeing on taking away our blanket medical insurance. Because you can literally take only that from our cold, dead hands... and only because when you're dead, you have no use for it anymore.
Frankly, if I had to choose between the two... I'd take medical insurance. Not only 'cause I get into the age range where it starts to pay out more than I pay in.
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People are generally not smart and do not understand how things work. Takes just one evil person to give them the wrong ideas and then they fight for what massively harms them. bad education and a polarized society (both likely created and maintained to keep the masses better under control) aid in that.
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The problem is now that this bites us (not only the US, because yes, that's been the staple of politics around the world) in the ass. Keep them stupid and they'll believe your bullshit works great... until you're not the only bullshit peddler anymore and suddenly you have competition from someone who actually tries to harm your country instead of just having a different idea of how it would run better.
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More people seeking medical aid for "trivial" matters turns out to be cheaper in the long run, even. That's one reason why we have a very dense and "free" screening process, it's simply cheaper to deal with trivial versions of sicknesses than wait for it to become a critical problem and you have to deal with ICU patients instead of using far cheaper meds to fight a beginning illness.
There's also another factor to take into account, something the US medical system probably doesn't care about as much as the E
The US is #1 (Score:2)
Meanwhile everyone in the UK, Australia and most of Europe is scratching their heads wondering how you can run up huge debts for medical treatment.
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Indeed. What an incredibly backwards society. 2nd World at best.
What a defective society where this is needed... (Score:2)
I mean, that factor of 200x shows that medical billing is a complete rip-off and not about actual cost. They could just sell the medical debt back to those in debt at that 200x markdown. But instead they sell to sharks, destroying lifes in the process. The very opposite of the idea of a medical system, I might add. It does not get much more perverted than this. But since too many people are profiteering and since the US prays to the mighty Dollar above anything else, this does not get fixed.
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Can't parse TFA either, but: take a lot of others' debt, die. Creditors won't get a penny more than your estate's worth.
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Cancer lady decided to now buy this debt from the vulture for say 1500 dollars and forgive