My first child has a genetic disorder. We had to spend 4 months in hospital during the first year and just one medication the kid has to take costs ~€250k per year.
For the hospital stay we paid a total of €0.
The medication costs ~€7 per pack and is capped to 2% of my yearly income.
Apparently not letting kids die from treatable conditions is socialism though.
Whether you are a hardcore capitalist, or any other political ideology, I just don’t understand how anybody can be against social policies.
In my country, people complain that our benefits system is crippling us. SOME people take advantage of our disabilities and childcare benefits, but it’s a small price to pay for having them – at the end of the day, if I had a disability which meant I could not work, my country would take care of me. For that, I am more than happy to pay more tax.
This extends to healthcare, childcare, education, etc. it’s easy to sit and grumble when you see the tax bill every month, but god forbid you ever actually need these services. I am VERY happy I do not require disability benefits, and I am VERY happy that I pay into a system that makes this (and other services) available for those who do.
Why would I want my tax dollars to the sick and elderly when they could be better used to help fund a billionaires pedophile sex ring??
My Son broke his arm (type 3 fracture) last week. We went to our local ER and were seen immediately. We ended up spending 3 nights in hospital and having multiple surgeries to pin and correct the break. He’s on a 6 week care plan with scheduled appointments with a specialist team.
Want to guess how much it cost us? $0 (or 1.5% bracketed tax of my income per year) b-b-but that’s socialism!!
No we don’t have fancy private health insurance, we just live in a country that doesn’t punish it’s citizens for being poor.
The USA needs a revolution.
Well you see, not having good insurance shows god’s disfavor. It’s all part of his mysterious plan that those with insurance were going to get cheated further out of their agreed upon insurance plan, and the government to be paid off by that insurance to allow it.
So while we, as Christians, especially Evangelicals and Calvinists and Baptists and the like, would love to help the poor, doing so would be to defy god’s will. It was predestined that we were to be selfish assholes actively trying to hurt the poors in every way.
The Prosperity Doctrine and social darwinism decree that they are poor because that’s the way god intended for it to be. I am a wealthy selfish prick because I have god’s favour. Tough break. /s
“…might be taxed more.”
Or taxed at all. If I dodged taxes the way these billionaire buttholes do, they would have already buried me UNDER the jail.
Hol’ up: You guys even have to pay for medical treatment for your kids? What kind of fucky shit have you got going on over there. Stop that.
They won’t stop it. They refuse to even think about it- utter cowardice.
They say Pro life but fuck over the poor kids after they’re born.
They just want to check for the Jesus Halo on the baby then throw it in the trash whereby the nurses generally retrieve it and give it back to the parents.
Id ask why you’d think our kids would get any special treatment but I’m too used to hell I guess
Dude, you have to pay for EVERYTHING in America. They already charge us to put air in our tires, if they could figure out how to charge us to put it into our lungs, they would.
Well, with how many were killed “accidentally” during the removal of homeless encampments in the past couple years, we’re kinda at that point aren’t we?
Fuck…
Why aren’t people having families? It must be the porn and the queers. That’s the only possible explanation. Yessiree.
the hospital went to court to garnish 35% of her wages. She works at McDonalds.
Not that I question the unsourced anecdotes of the God account, but I’d be genuinely curious to see a business that thought an astronomical legal bill would be worth garnishing the wages of a service sector worker.
As someone with family in the legal profession and the medical billing profession, it’s crazy to think of the cost-benefit of pursuing this kind of claim given the return expected. Hospitals write off millions a year in “bad debt”, because collection is consistently more expensive than the real value of these claims.
Can hospitals still sell their debts to third party collection agencies? Those groups seem like exactly the type to garnish McD wages.
Collection agencies will buy hospital debt at pennies on the dollar. And then collection agencies can try to annoy you into paying. But they have an even weaker claim on your debt than the original hospital. Getting a court to agree to garnish wages is a drawn out process. And it can be easily circumvented if you quit your job and take up employment somewhere else. In the service sector, that happens so routinely as to make wage garnishment a fool’s errand.
I’ve had my wages garnished from an ambulance trip. 18Y/o me was insanely confused when HR pulled me aside to let me know.
They ended up only getting a few hundred Bucks, how could that possibly have been worth it for them? In any case if they would do that to me it wouldnt surprise me to hear they do it to others as well.
They ended up only getting a few hundred Bucks, how could that possibly have been worth it for them?
If the debt collector bought the debt for pennies on the dollar, there are edge cases. Even then, it’s an expensive process to try and only works as long as you’re rooted in a particular job. As soon as you leave, the collectors have to go back and refile all their claims against you against the new employer.
So it generally isn’t worth the time, which is why the post is sus.
John Oliver bought a bunch to forgive if I remember correctly.
My brother in law had a medical bill that was supposed to be covered by insurance, but they didn’t pay. (A small-ish bill of a few thousand dollars) His bill was sent to collections, and they hounded him for years, despite him having in writing that the insurance and hospital both agreed that the insurance was supposed to cover it. After 8 years, they started garnishing his wages. This is when he decided to get a lawyer involved, and he was able to successfully sue the hospital for garnishing wages illegally. The hospital had to pay out 30K.
All that to say, hospitals aren’t always acting intelligently or legally.
How did they garnish his wages without having a court involved? They would had to have sued him already in court.
I think he was served papers at one point around the 3-4 year mark, but just told the hospital he wasn’t going to pay since they already had agreed in writing he didn’t have to pay. He never went to court. I don’t know the exact process, it was never explained to my brother in law, but given they had a valid, unpaid bill of 8 years (and multiple attempts to get him to pay on record) was enough?
Yeah, that’s a default judgement then. If you’re served, you need to respond, or else the judge declares in favor of the plaintiff.
Sure, I understand that the judge didn’t do anything wrong, but the hospital was wrong to even try garnishing wages in the first place
You’ll get no disagreement from me, the system is broken.
All that to say, hospitals aren’t always acting intelligently or legally.
Right. Which is why I’d like to see the actual story and not some vague anecdote by a novelty account.
Fair enough, I was just getting at the fact that this isn’t far from something I’ve seen a hospital do firsthand, and thus doesn’t feel like a fake story to me
They legally cannot garnish more than 25% of your earnings after taxes
Edit Op is correct
And with a 25-30% tax rate that makes the pre-tax skim 35.7% .
Garnishment percentage is calculated based on income after taxes/social security/etc.
Fuck I better start paying my medical bills
i worked also in the data transfer and reporting portion of hosp billing and can tell you, from the pov of the folks with two commas in their salaries, it’s all just bog standard heartless capitalism to them.
You don’t. You sell those to debt collection agencies and they garnish the wages.
Wage garnishment happens at the end of a long series of legal filings and claims against the debtor.
And, again, you can avoid it by changing jobs. Which is easy enough for someone in a low wage service sector that very few debt collectors bother trying.
You tend to push for wage garnishment when the person is in a job they can’t easily leave - partner at a law firm, manager at a Fortune 500 company, tenured professor - not someone who can walk across the street and land a new job doing the same work at the same pay over the weekend.
So this goes through the employer then? Not through like the IRS who can just take stuff from any paycheck?
So if you owe money to some federal entity or a state entity, they can skip the line and garnish your wages, but if it’s just some collections agency, they would have to sue you first, and only with a court order could they garnish your wages.
The IRS withholds taxes from your paystub based on your W2. You can technically zero out your withholdings from the IRS, but this can incur penalties and it exposes your employer to annoying audit requests, so its discouraged at the HR level.
Paycheck withholds that come through a court order are something different entirely. And you’d really need to sit down with an actual Employment Law expert to get the fine details, as they can vary by state and county as well as by how you get paid (salary versus contractor, etc). Which agent actually gets to deduct money from your paystub, how it is escrowed, when the collector can access the money, how that deducts from your total debts, etc isn’t federalized.
But I can say with some degree of confidence that unless you owe money to the IRS, the IRS isn’t involved.
I’m not sure people change jobs very easily in this economy. But your point is valid.
I’d argue that the actual truth of that story is totally secondary. It might be false and probably is, but the main premise of a draining, soul-crushing “healthcare” system is the point. And nobody would probably question that.
This anectode being wrong would not change it.
Making up stories to prove a position only weakens the position, IMO. We have plenty of real life stories why the healthcare indsutry (shouldn’t even have to call it an industry) is disgusting without needing to fabricate things.
I think it doesn’t even need real life stories, everybody knows about it anyway. Even the people NOT in the USA do know. But basically you’re right of course.
They send it to collections, collections hands it off to a lawyer who files in court, court sends a beer date, person can’t afford to take off for the day, so court issues a default judgment.
The system does not care about one’s circumstances if one is too poor to advocate for themselves.
Add a dash of depression, anxiety and stress and this is a very believable scenario for anyone who is even of adequate means.
collections hands it off to a lawyer who files in court
Lawyer sends the collections agency a bill for 10x the collections amount.
Similarly, if you’re accused of a crime and you’re poor, you might not be able to afford bail money, so you’ll be stuck in jail and you’ll inevitably lose your job, ruining your life, regardless of whether you’re guilty or innocent.
Meanwhile if you’re rich and an Epstein co-conspirator pedophile who raped and sex trafficked children, the government won’t even arrest you.
Meanwhile if you’re rich and an Epstein co-conspirator pedophile who raped and sex trafficked children, the government won’t even arrest you.
In fact, the government will do everything it can to protect you!
And homelessness is illegal now so I’m sure the system will inevitably end up imprisoning her and forcing her to preform slave labor in a for profit prison and she will have her children taken away and placed into a system that will abuse and exploit them until they age out and end up in the for profit prison system as 80% of foster youth do The system is corrupt from top to bottom. Nothing will improve until the pedofile parasite class fears the masses
For profit prisons are a problem, but they’re not the main problem. Only about 8% of prisoners in the US are in for profit prisons.
The real problem is state run prisons and the contracts they give to for profit businesses.
Oh, the real problem is slavery is still legal if you’re incarcerated. But, I don’t disagree with you, either.
I don’t think inmates working is a bad thing at all. Texas actually used to do prisons right. They were nearly completely self-sufficient with inmates farming, ranching, etc. for them to live on. I think they even made their own clothing. And I think community service things like trash pickup are great too.
At the end of the day, keeping people in prison is expensive for the taxpayers, so I don’t see a problem with having prisoners offset that. And that’s the reason I think only violent repeat offenders should be incarcerated. Let everyone else continue contributing to society and use different methods to rehabilitate them.
A lot of inmates haven’t really ever had real steady employment, so if the goal is rehabilitation giving them the experience will only help them when they get out.
Not to mention that people just like to work in general. I know that I’d rather be doing something than staring at my cell wall for the majority of the day.
But I do agree that inmates doing labor for for-profit businesses is something that should never happen.
The real problem is the system is corrupted from top to bottom and we need a revolution
Everything else aside, why the fuck can they garnish 35% of a low income worker wage. If garnishing is a thing, there should be some kinds of means testing based on income that makes it a sliding scale that is substantially lower than 35% for a McDonalds worker.
I recall reading something about some states either trying or succeeding to bring back debtor prisons.
Utah for one, and not the only one.
In Utah, its an end run around the prohibition on debtor’s prisons, but the supreme court is likely to overturn that after the next presidential election is successfully rigged for their party and more Blue States fall to them to be fixed.
But they will find debt, some buy distressed debt, the debtor sells the unpaid debt for a fraction of it, someone buys it, then they file a case in court to collect, often in the big city, salt lake, regardless of where the person accused lives. Then they get default judgements when the person doesn’t show up, and put in requests (then or in resulting hearings about collecting on those judgements,) they ask the judge to hold them in contempt.
The judges almost always do, they see themselves as an arm of big business and LE, not the neutral arbiter between them and the accused. If the person comes up with the money to pay off the judgement, they are released from jail, if not they serve up to whatever the cut off is for those types of contempt judgements, 90 days or 180 I forget. But they can just file another action and do it again after the person is let out.
Then the accused of course is charged for their time in jail as well. Idk how Utah deals with that debt, but in other states it’s not collected by the state like fines and fees, which lead directly to being jailed, a day for every 10 or 20 dollars owed last I heard. Fines that get doubled a couple of times and see other fees thrown on top. But those jail fees for the stay are sent to collections, and someone could well buy that debt for pennies on the dollar, and start a new case filing in civil court.
I personally don’t accept the 35% as a 100% true and pure fact, without some citations. However, the percentage obviously isn’t the point here, so I wouldn’t get too hung up on the exact number. Even if it was 3.5%, this general situation is still inexcusable.
For the record, most places limit wage garnishment for debts at something like 10% - 25%. Certain types of debt, like student loan debt and medical debt, are often lower or on the lower end. And lower income, with higher costs like having children, can also reduce the max %.
In my state it’s up to 25%, you can guess what % is chose every time. Ask me how I know, currently losing 25% each check right now. It hits hard.
Child support used to take a full half of my income. So, I can believe it.
Day I got the letter saying I had fully repaid that shit?Fucking brought me to tears.
Child support isn’t treated the same way as consumer debt in pretty much any jurisdiction in the USA that I’m aware of. Things like that and possibly stuff like alimony or similar legal agreements pretty much always have higher limits and more tools available to collect.
So, it would be a bit of a mistake, in my opinion, to equate child support and its laws with medical / consumer debt.
I know it wouldn’t play out like this, but I can just imagine owing 50% on child support, then that 35% garnished for medical debts, and both departments are like fuck you we want our money to each other so they garnish 85% instead of working with each other.
Last I checked near me, these guardrails exist, but I’m sure in some red state they’re allowed to garnish wages for medical debt with no restrictions.
Propublica did a piece a year or two back about one of those hospitals in a poor area in one of the shitholy states, LA I think, that was suing people for medical debt, going after their paltry assets. Insult to injury is them charging obscene amounts of money for routine procedures, and if you rejected taking someone to the hospital you could get criminally charged to boot. It is a service you have to avail yourself of, where there is no alternatives in any area usually, whereby their prices are rigged against poor people, and higher echelons aren’t uncheated either, especially moreso now with the US and States taking off the mask of fairness and openly embracing the corruption for the rich.
But that hospital kind of stopped after the reporting and said like oops, kind of a mistake, or something. Sunlight really does disinfect to a degree still.
Well that’s good to hear there’s at least some sanity out there.
Federal law should cap that at 25% and that should be after taxes and related items are taken out. It’s also shared between all garnishments, so if you have 2 or 3 garnishments it shouldn’t exceed 25% overall. This is still a huge amount, but that should be as high as it can go in the US. Some states do have lower limits, but a 35% rate should be illegal in the US.
In India we do have affordable public healthcare but 99% of it is so shit, corrupt, with pretty poor medical infrastructure, long waiting, unhygienic surroundings, poor security, poor air conditioning, and so on. So that one has to visit a private hospital or clinic to get treated. And most of the times they don’t accept public healthcare insurance coverage like ESI (Employee State Insurance) or Ayushaman-Bharat so you have to shell out extra out of your pocket to get a Private Health coverage plan. If you have a private plan, the private hospitals then submit invoices with higher fees to the insurer to mint more money from them thus reducing their cash to pay for other patients. The central government barely allocates any budget to healthcare and education.
I heard about a case from Bihar (one of the least developed states) where they constructed a public hospital for millions of dollars (which is very high thus some corrupt official or politician ate that money) only for it to be incomplete and abandoned.
This is what I think truly turns people into law breakers, I won’t say criminals. When the system works against you, why work with the system?
Low income people get pushed down so hard for trying. I’m am not at all surprised when they turn to illegal income to just try to have a little piece of what other people are born into.
All her children are learning that lesson. They are learning “No one is going to help you and the system is only there to hurt you.”
When you realize you can avoid legal punishment by paying fines and fees that poor people cannot, you understand what the system is really designed for.
You don’t have to think it, we have plenty of evidence. The best way to fight crime is to fight poverty but that requires actually caring for others.
The sad thing is that it doesn’t even require caring for others.
It’s in everyone’s best interest to reduce crime before they become victims therefore it’s in your best interest to fight poverty.
The wealthy may be insulated from the consequences of their choices but surely the other 99% vote in their own best interest, right?
Yup. Honestly, I don’t like most people. I’m known as very friendly and I have close friendships, people trust me, and I do have sizeable groups of people I like but 95% of the population I do not and will likely never want to be anywhere remotely near if at all possible…
…AND YET I still want everyone to be better. I still live in a city and I still willingly take and support public transit despite owning a car. Today, I gave a homeless guy a protein shake for him and treats for his dog. I gave someone I detest my gloves during a fire alarm which put us all put in the cold because they couldn’t get to their jacket before leaving. I do NOT understand how their can be people so full of hate that they not only have literally violent reactions to other people existing but that they will hurt themselves in order keep others from even a small amount of peace. It’s honestly a huge stress point because how the fuck are things supposed to progress if that’s how so many people are?
The root is fear. Convince people to be afraid of something, they will let you completely reprogram their mind. Fuck, they’ll even beg you to do so…
Lots of people are afraid and not doing horrible things to others, I don’t buy that excuse anymore.
Oh, I don’t mean it that way. People that use their fear and insecurities to justify hated can fuck right off to the deepest layers of hell!
True, everyone ignores that obvious fact and here we are. Thousands of years of history repeating itself. The systems have evolved, but not the people.
So all we did was get really good at oppression and making everyone else think it’s the victims problem, so the power stays at the top.
And with the power of the internet we’ve made it so that it’s all even more obvious(because apparently people ruling through divine right and then brutalizing their populations wasn’t obvious enough) and yet we still can’t get it.
Luckily, with our huge, recent jump in technology, we have the chance to see a change previously not possible. I’m crossing every finger and toe.
One of my good friends about a decade ago had this very argument.
The right swore to everyone that hospitals can’t turn you away, they have to treat you and if you can’t pay for it they’ll let you out of it.
I was working healthcare adjecent at the time, I’m telling him Fuck now, that’s not how this works. It is a possible outcome.
If you walkin homeless, they might get you to the point where you’re stable and set you free, but as soon as you have a kid there and you have to give them an ID and a name, your chances of being fucked go up 10x
The “pro-life” group.
Yet then if you are a mother and don’t take your child to see medical care you are accused of child neglect and have them potentially taken away or you go to jail because you couldn’t afford to take them to the hospital.
And that’s the way the system is designed.
Keep the poor, poor, siphon the money from the averge go until he’s poor, more slowly sipohon the money from the upper middle class so they don’t feel it.
punish the poor for being poor, point at them and show how shitty they are for not taking care of thier kids.
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I know a woman. She grew up with her mom, and her brother. When her brother was born, he had significant medical problems. (The father, being just about the worst POS to exist, reacted to news of his son’s medical problems by finding himself a new girlfriend.) Since this happened in the US, the family had to sell their house and property, and this family grew up on the edge of homelessness as a result.
When this happens to one person it can affect generations. Healthcare more like what the rest of the world has could have allowed these people to be contributors to society (and taxes) instead of burdens to them.
Problem is, Money Obsessed Persons are often too stupid to understand any other concepts than money. They cannot understand cause and effect for anything that will happen more than three months from a given date. So the idea that helping a child now equals a taxpayer in the future is not something they are able to understand.
