Another more than $200 million in medical debt has been wiped out for Arizonans. And the recipients are going to know who to thank: Gov. Katie Hobbs.
The new figure was announced Monday by Allison Sasso. She’s the president and CEO of Undue Medical Debt, a company that agreed earlier this year to use some $10 million in state American Rescue Plan COVID relief dollars to buy up medical debt from hospitals and doctors for a few pennies on the dollar, eliminating a negative mark on the credit reports of those who racked up the bills.
All totaled, according to the governor’s office, the program has so far erased $642 million owed by more than 485,000 Arizonans.
I’m happy for Arizona to get this, I hope the plan continues for more people in the state.
The beautiful thing about this kind of policy is: it’s almost impossible to get the public against it once it happens. Even with the near total control of MAGA on the minds of its base, getting people to openly harm themselves – specifically in the face of counterevidence, not without it – is a hard sell.
And yes, it’s not a complete fix. But don’t let perfection be the enemy of progress. We have done that far too long.
This is beautiful. For those calling it a half measure, calling for the end to private insurance etc etc, this is the government paying for medical care.
By paying only pennies on the dollar it’s demonstrating that medical debt is a farce. That puts a huge dent in the myth that public healthcare is impractical here
If you’re expecting the American people to see nuanced healthcare policy behind this then I’m not sure what to tell you. You should know by now that we don’t do that.
Here’s the thing, if we keep doing politics that plays to people’s stupidity rather than their ability to think independently then we might as well ditch democracy.
It is paying for medical care… And HMO grift.
At the rate they’re purchasing debt, it’s arguably not
Get ready for the DOJ to drop a lawsuit.
Isn’t that debt still paid back to the private insurance companies?
Better people debt is erased, but even better if the debt is absorbed by the insurance companies which is the point of having insurance in the first place.
It’s paid using existing debt collection channels, which means the private insurance is only making pennies on the dollar, and it’s money they would have already made anyways.
Let’s say an insurance company has $1M in outstanding debt to collect. They don’t want to bother with actually collecting, because they know the chance of actually collecting any individual debt is low. They’re willing to write off a lot of it as a loss, but they want to get some money for it. So they sell it to a debt collector.
The insurance company takes that $1M in aggregated debt, (owed by dozens or even hundreds of people), and a debt collector buys it for like $50k. The debt collector gets the debtors’ contact info, and how much they owe. Oftentimes, that’s basically all they get.
Now the debt collector can work on actually collecting that debt. They know that collecting on any one person’s debt will be difficult, but anything past that initial $50k investment is pure profit for them. And there is a lot of potential profit to be made on that $950k. They’ll be able to do things like offer steep discounts to debtors, because even 50% of the debt is still $450k in profit. They’ll work on that aggregated debt for a while, and the ones that they can’t collect on will get re-aggregated and resold to another debt collector for even less.
The government basically went “well companies are already selling the debt… Why don’t we just buy it and forgive it? It’ll be cheaper than paying their debts outright or fighting with the hospitals to lower bills, and it doesn’t require getting voters onboard with socialized healthcare.” If they’re able to spend $50k to forgive $1M in debt, that’s a huge win even if it means $50k lands in the insurance company’s pocket. And again, that money would have eventually made its way to the insurance company anyways, via normal debt collectors buying the debt.
Yes but only at a fraction of what these companies act like it should be. When a company is telling you it costs $100 but then magically will take $1 for the same services…some shit is going on with the system.
The pizza shop wanted to charge you $20,000 for your pie, but since you have a PizzaProtect Care Plan, it will actually only cost you $35.
Fuck, you put the idea out there and now I fully expect to see a PizzaCare membership pop up at a pizza place within a year.
Symptom treatment. Here in europe medical dept is unknown.
The phrase that will piss me off more than anything. Someone (likely a poor/homeless person} needs immediate medical intervention.
“But who will pay for it?!” How about those taxes I’m paying that the corporations aren’t?
But if our taxes go to pay for medical care, how could we fund war profits and racist policy?
OMG! I forgot about the shareholders! I feel so ashamed…
And you should feel ashamed! Those poor shareholders.
cause we have continuous symptom treatment?
pick a political side not a continental one my fren
“continuous symptom treatment” is called “healthcare.”
when capitalism is worldwide and has purchased politics, it is a political thing. not a continental one. :)
health care in europe isn’t planned economy. as i interpret it it’s market with it’s symptoms fought on the “front-end”.
what they did over there is a political stunt in that same direction
when people have healthcare they can afford, as a community even, it’s not a stunt. reminder that if it’s required for life, health, safety, education, and housing - it should NOT be allowed to profit, be owned by the workers, and until that transition happens, the current owners should be reminded they are pieces of shit. :)
of course they should have that. of course we need to abolish capitalism if we want a human humanity. needs of the people not profit of a few.
to get there we do political stunts (leftover covid funds for medical debt), we take parts of the social reality away from the market or at least undo market-consequences (public health care) and we build narratives (like you just did, like I just did).
I guess my point is on this platform too often people don’t differ between those strategies and between strategy and analysis. And if we don’t get better at that, we won’t succeed :)
This is downright fucking amazing! Though… I’m surprised the Communicialists aren’t whining about this being not enough considering she’s a Filthy Lib™
