Someone in another thread said that they believe in the free market for health insurance. I simply cannot believe in a free market in an industry that bankrupts people in exchange for health.
No one should have medical debt. Period.
this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2024
166 points (98.3% liked)
News
23627 readers
2467 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
There's no such thing as a free market for healthcare. If I'm having a heart attack, I can't weigh the costs and benefits of calling an ambulance or going to the hospital, or even choosing which hospital I go to or who I see in the hospital. I'm dying and I need my life saved.
Sorry, can't do that. Butthurt republicans will cry "IT'S NOT FAIR", and some court in Texas will claim jurisdiction over Los Angeles, TX.
I get the sentiment, but medical debt forgiveness this way is nothing new. It's not helpful to lambast every single good story with dooming. Constant despair isn't helping us move the needle and fight back. Point out the fights where they, otherwise we're just making people too despaired to fight at all
The non-profit they partnered with has been doing work forgiving debt since 2014. And there's been high profile cases of people doing this too. In 2016, John Oliver forgave $15 million worth of medical debt for ~9 thousand people
Other local governments have done the same thing with the same non-profit:
In January this year, New York City said they were going to do the same for around 2 billion worth of medical debt for 500 thousand people over 3 years (paying around $18 million to buy that debt)
In 2023, Oakland County Michigan forgave around $200 million (paying around $2 million for the debt)
And so on
I didn't know this was a possible. How is this possible. Isn't the debt owed to corporations?
When debt isn't paid off for long enough / they think it'll be too much work to collect, it's often sold by those organizations to private debt collectors. Here instead of collecting the debt, they just buy the debt then agree to forgive it
Hopefully none for any GOP's. (Gray Old Pedophiles)
I wish we could decide where our taxes go to and we'd get the benefits. I'd like healthcare, education, infrastructure for starters. Repubs can pay for their own wars and get horrible water and dumb kids.
Expunge it off their credit reports and then I'll be impressed.