How is this not bigger news?! This is life changing for a great many Americans.

  • @Pacattack57
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    41 day ago

    Yes however medical debt is covered under hipa. When the debt agencies buy your medical debt they are violating hipa laws. There are a lot of strategies for eliminating this type of debt without ever paying it. Usually simply asking for debt verification is enough to get it removed from your credit report.

    • @[email protected]
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      fedilink
      215 hours ago

      My strategy of literally ignoring collectors and sending all their calls to voicemail (for a surgery done in early 2023 in which I owed a couple thousand dollars) actually worked. I was called once a week or so for a little over a year and I haven’t been contacted since June 2024.

      I believe I was dinged on my credit score but the penalty was low single-digits, and it didn’t affect my eligibility to buy a house. Your mileage will vary, and I definitely can’t in good conscience recommend this as your first resort. Talk to a professional about risks and benefits of not paying certain debts if you can’t or don’t want to pay; some debts are not optional. But yeah, some are.

    • @[email protected]
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      fedilink
      218 hours ago

      The strategy that seems to work the best is just to never interact with the debt from the start, it becomes almost impossible for them to collect.

    • @[email protected]
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      fedilink
      English
      21 day ago

      This is the second time I’ve heard this in as many days… do you have any sources I could look at?