Quote:
Originally Posted by butthead aka 216
i wonder tho, what happens when you have like hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to a hospital o whatever?? and you cant pay it. do they jail you or what?
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Well, the only kind of debt that can't be absolved via bankruptcy are those federally backed student loans. So, that's a short answer.
The long answer is most hospitals have sliding fee scales. So those who cannot pay the full amount can, with a bit of paperwork, have the fee reduced. Then there's hospitals set up specifically to deal with the poor. These usually just require one bring in the WIC/Food Stamps/Whatever paperwork one has. Then there's the hospitals set up to deal with the homeless, too.... which are completely free.
If you read some of the previous pages, you'll see some of the Liberal members here railing against this current system because it means the rest of society has to pay for these uninsured people. As the way Hospitals are allowed to have these sliding fee scales is just by making everything more expensive.
This is, somehow, magically different from Obamacare which will initiate a complex system of subsidies to cover those who can't pay for their insurance or now fall into the category of those who will be subsidized.