Experts partnered with RIP Medical Debt, a medical non-profit that buys and forgives debt, found it had little effect on people’s credit scores and mental health
Medical debt is the most common form of debt in collections in the US. But forgiving that debt once it has gone to collections may provide fewer health and financial benefits than once hoped.
A new study by researchers who partnered with RIP Medical Debt, a non-profit that buys and forgives medical debt, found “disappointing” results when people’s bills were purchased and forgiven, with little impact on people’s credit scores and willingness to go to the doctor.
“Our hope was that this would be a cost effective intervention,” said Raymond Kluender, lead author on the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) report which partnered with RIP Medical Debt, and an assistant professor of business administration at Harvard Business School.
“We find no real benefits on people’s household finances or their mental health or utilization of healthcare in our study,” Kluender said.
However, he added, he doesn’t “think any of the authors on the project would not say medical debt is not a huge issue”. Instead, Kluender said, “Our interpretation is you have to intervene upstream,” which essentially means it might be more effective to provide people with financial assistance or universal, affordable healthcare – the sort that might prevent bills from accumulating – rather than forgive one bill at a time.
Makes me sick that Canadian conservatives keep pushing for privatized Healthcare.
Conservatives everywhere push for privatized healthcare. It’s not specific to Canada. Fuck you got mine IS conservatism.
Conservatives always complain about Canadian wait times but would wait times really be an issue if the Canadian healthcare system had 50% more funding like it does in the US (which objectively has worse outcomes overall)? But of course they push to cut funding to make wait times worse so that more expensive private coverage is more attractive. They are pushing for a system that costs more and is objectively worse. Canadians should push for more funding for public insurance to provide more funding to facilities and decrease wait times.
It makes me sicker to know we’ve allowed privatized healthcare to dig its claws into Canada already, ie: assisted living and LTC homes are almost always for-profit.
RIP Medical Debt
Say wat
Also, between careers about 8 years ago I needed work bad and took a job doing support and light programming for a piece of software used by the collections industry.
Nope. Never again. What a vacuum of humanity that industry is and the medical side of it is large enough to be its own sub-industry.
I’m dealing with it right now. I’m two months behind on one credit card. They have already reported it to the credit bureaus, and a second credit card (which I am still current on) reduced my available credit the same day the delinquency showed up on my report. Additionally, the credit card I’m behind on happened to also be where I have a checking account. They took every last penny out of that account “to apply it to the credit card” (less than $100).
I have never been late on anything in my life and have never overdrawn my bank account either.
Also, before I started getting behind on things I had a hospital bill that I’ve been paying on for over a year, always on time and as per mutual agreement. They called me a few months ago and said they were sending it to collections. Basically they didn’t like how long it was taking to pay off. (but if they didn’t want it to take that long then why did they agree to a low payment? Do they not have calculators?)
Anyway I was feeling pretty bad about this stuff but then I remembered that I did everything “right” and never got any grace from them, so now my only regret is paying these bills for so long when I could have used that money elsewhere.
Wouldnt be such an issue if the bills werent sent to collections before you even know about them
This a million times. Every time I go to a medical visit I give them my credit card for my copay and ask to just pay any additional fees upfront. They always say that I’m fine and the copay covers it, then 6 months later I get a call from collections saying I owe $100+ because I missed the bills in the mail amongst all the junk. There has to be a better way to handle this.
Heck they even have my email address to send a bill to. Not a peep
Because it’s incredibly difficult to collect on… unless you have flaunted fully owned assets, you can have tons of medical debt and nothing will happen. That shit gets sold for pennies on the dollar, and I am sure the entire office does a happy dance when they get a valid credit card to bill.
