For me medical debt is s much bigger issue for the US than student loan debt.
Erasing the debt would be a short term fix and not sure it is a solution. Need to look at reducing the cost of health care.
There is a lot of innovation in this area, for example there is a move away from fee for service doctors reimbursement model to one based on clinical outcomes. Doctors were naturally skeptical of this at first but those who joined the pilot programs are now overwhelmingly converts. It allows them to spend time with their patients and not suffer a drop in revenue. This has the knock on effect of reducing ER visits, specialist visits and RX to name a few.
Technology is a big driver as well, smartwatches and smartwear can provide cost effective ongoing monitoring and provide real time data to individuals and medical professionals.
Having a video conference with a doctor is more cost effective and many times more convenient than an office visit. Tech allows for virtual docs to get blood pressure and other vitals.
For pennies on the dollar, the congregation had bought up $3.3 million of medical debt belonging to 3,355 local families. With bells ringing and confetti flying, the church held a “debt burning” ceremony marking the full forgiveness of these burdens.
This life-changing feat was accomplished with a little more than $15,000 in donations, organized through the church’s Debt Jubilee Project in partnership with RIP Medical Debt, a New York-based nonprofit.
RIP Medical Debt says it works with partners to purchase these bundles of debt without pursuing the debt holders.
I don’t believe it’s fair to criticize this program for the problems it doesn’t solve when it so efficient at dealing with the problem it’s designed to fix.
I’m not bringing religion into it. Was just reading the replies and it seemed like people didn’t understand how the program worked, so I posted an example of how it does.
No reason to attribute extra scheming and motives to something that’s really simple.
That is the basic difference between dems and conservatives. You don’t consider the potential consequences of instant gratification in an arena in which you cannot reset back to zero.
Isn’t it seen in the church example? A large problem was efficiency addressed in their community for very little money.
I do see a partisan divide in this thread. The conservative opposition is a little bit too extra for a simple program that buys cheap debt and just doesn’t collect it. It’s not some radical program.
When I look at my EOB’s from my insurance company they absolutely do not pay what the hospital bill is. If the hospital bills say $5,000 what the insurance company pays is usually around $2,000. Then it says patient responsibility $0
Help me understand this. They can eliminate debt with pennies on the dollar because pennies are better than nothing? You can do that with cars or houses because they’ll just take them back. But if they could, would it be a good idea? No problems? Or am I missing something here?
