215

Assuming nobody else is at fault

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 76 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

ER patches you up, you get a large bill, you declare bankruptcy, life goes on.

The question you should ask is, what happens if you have no insurance and you develop a serious chronic illness.

[-] gressen@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago

How does "life go on" with a bankruptcy and health issues?

[-] vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 27 points 1 year ago

The point of a bankruptcy is to move on. You start off at zero again, but you can start building up assets again.

As far as the health issues go, because of the bankruptcy and the ACA you probably qualify for medical care under one of the programs.

Yeah, you get fucked over pretty good. Life goes on because you’re not dead. But everything you had, everything you worked for, is gone. You are left literally with life, not with your life.

[-] Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 year ago

For all its faults the ability for an individual to declare bankruptcy sounds like a rather good thing in the US and something we don't have in Finland. Granted we don't have that level of healthcare bills either but if you somehow get youself millions into debt here it sticks with you your whole life.

[-] TheDoctorDonna@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

You still have to pay for the bankruptcy. I don't know exactly how it works because I've never declared it, but it's not free to go bankrupt either. In American Capitalism they will screw the poor people every way they can.

[-] droans@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

There has to be some form of bankruptcy, isn't there?

When you declare bankruptcy, you're basically going to the courts and saying, "Look. I don't have the money or the income to cover all my debts. I need help." If the court agrees, they'll force all your creditors to come to the table to negotiate.

The court determines what assets you can keep and determines the best way to divvy up what's left. Usually you keep your house, car, and basic necessities but that can vary. Some states don't protect the house or car but even then the court will consider if it's cheaper or better for you to keep either of those than to go rent a new house and take alternate transportation.

Then they look at your income and decide what you can afford to pay over time. If your income is too low, they may consider all your debts settled at that point. Otherwise, they may set up a payment plan for so many years and consider you even after that.

Medical debt is the number one reason for bankruptcy. To twist the knife a bit, people who have large medical bills are often in a physical condition that makes it hard to work. About 2/3 of all bankruptcies, or 530,000 families annually, cite their medical bills when filing. After that is mortgage debt (45%), living beyond their means (44.5%), providing help to friends and family (28.5%), student loans (25.5%), and divorce (24.5%).

[-] jimbo@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

My parents went bankrupt like 4 times and it never seemed to make any difference to them. They'd just move on with life and have new credit debt racked up within a few months.

[-] AdamHenry@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 1 year ago

For some, it can be an unbearable long and leasurely spin around the drains perimeter.

this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
215 points (97.8% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35868 readers
502 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS