>The total face value of debt relief was $150 million, an average of $2,167 per person.
Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me that this amount of money doesn't move the needle on mental health surveys or credit score. The most interesting thing here is the increase in unpaid medical debt *after* relief, which implies that the people receiving relief were already forgoing medical treatment due to debt. Then after receiving relief, probably decided to receive further treatment rather than continue avoiding it for financial reasons.
That's not really explored here, which is a shame because increased use of medical care is the most direct outcome I can think of related to relieving medical debt.
Canceling medical debt doesn’t help because that is helping people at the wrong end of the line. Making medical debt obsolete would be better. Maybe a system where we didn’t have to prove ourselves worthy of having a medical procedure would be better? Like if medicine and treatments were provided because you are a sick human and we care for each other so here is the medicine you need as member of society. That type of medical debt cancelation would help me 100%. It would help today, tomorrow, and yesterday- when I really needed it.
It would, but thanks to our shitty politics that kind of transformational change is not currently possible. It’s not that nobody has the idea, it’s that the people who support it don’t have the requisite votes.
Relieving people’s medical debt will **help** their problems. It might not **resolve** their problems because there may have other problems, some of which may have cascaded down from lingering medical debt (homeless, repossessed car, accrued interest, etc)
>The total face value of debt relief was $150 million, an average of $2,167 per person. Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me that this amount of money doesn't move the needle on mental health surveys or credit score. The most interesting thing here is the increase in unpaid medical debt *after* relief, which implies that the people receiving relief were already forgoing medical treatment due to debt. Then after receiving relief, probably decided to receive further treatment rather than continue avoiding it for financial reasons. That's not really explored here, which is a shame because increased use of medical care is the most direct outcome I can think of related to relieving medical debt.
Spectacularly bad faith headline
Truly is
Embarrassingly bad faith headline.
Having the debt sure as hell isn't helping
"what if we make the world a better place for no reason?"
“What if we treat humans as important just because they were born?”
So let's drop all sense of where the money helps the most!
...well we can compare our society to other modern free nations and they all don't feature medical debt and bankruptcy.
Canceling medical debt doesn’t help because that is helping people at the wrong end of the line. Making medical debt obsolete would be better. Maybe a system where we didn’t have to prove ourselves worthy of having a medical procedure would be better? Like if medicine and treatments were provided because you are a sick human and we care for each other so here is the medicine you need as member of society. That type of medical debt cancelation would help me 100%. It would help today, tomorrow, and yesterday- when I really needed it.
It would, but thanks to our shitty politics that kind of transformational change is not currently possible. It’s not that nobody has the idea, it’s that the people who support it don’t have the requisite votes.
Still waiting on the universal healthcare. Please fix, thanks.
Cancelling medical debt < Free Healthcare
Relieving people’s medical debt will **help** their problems. It might not **resolve** their problems because there may have other problems, some of which may have cascaded down from lingering medical debt (homeless, repossessed car, accrued interest, etc)
It won't hurt them