Why isn't discharge of medical debt in bankruptcy part of the health care bill?

[Alhena]

Right now, we have the outrageous situation where an uninsured father who went bankrupt paying for his child's cancer treatment is treated exactly the same by the bankruptcy laws as someone who ran up a bunch of credit card bills. It would be so easy to provide for an easy discharge of medical bills in chapter 7 with no restrictions on future filings if further medical bills are incurred.

Why is this not part of the debate?

[Deja Q]

1. Because there might be good news about health care reform coming up?

I do not know, but I may as well be optimistic.

[peace frog]

7. Goodness gracious! We can't have that, now can we.

Something in HCR legislation that would benefit the people? Surely you jest.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. Good question!

Although from tangling with Republicanites on my local paper's website, I'm sure they'll just say that the father should have saved up enough money to pay for the remote possibility that one of his children might develop cancer. No, really, that's the type of thing they say, believe it or not.

[demmiblue]

8. Hard to believe...

I guess that some people cannot walk in the shoes of others (or care, for that matter).

I can't even fathom saving enough money to pay for a catastrophic illness, much less a minor one!

[Romulox]

3. Medical debt *is* dischargeable in bankruptcy.

I don't see any point in changing the time limits built into the Bankruptcy Code to accommodate for outlandish medical bills.

If we as a society are going to pay for it, it is much more sensible (not to say humane) to pay for the medical care without insisting the patient be pauperized first.

[Faryn Balyncd]

4. And of the fact that Americans denied insurance are charged 250-600% more than insurance companies..

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Faryn%20Balyncd/1

[pokercat999]

9. Part of the health care bill should state that ANY kind of HC

provider, Dr, Pharmacy, Hospital, whatever should have only one price for ALL customers. It's total bullshit that when you lose your medical insurance on top of all the other hardships the "caregivers" charge as much as six times what they were charging for the exact same service for the same individual because the billing is now directly to the patient instead of to an insurance company. This should simply be against the law.

If not single payer than certainly single price.

[Lars39]

5. And what happens if you've already gone bankrupt once, but have

racked up more medical bills? If you have committed yourself to paying off current medical bills, you might not be able to afford mandatory insurance. On paper it might look like you could afford the mandatory insurance, but the reality is that you're paying to keep the bill collectors off your back.

[Feron]

11. Very true.

A family friend went bankrupt after her divorce when she was saddled with his debts.

She remarried and her current uninsured husband became very ill. He has gotten treatment, but it has broken them financially. She pays twenty-five bucks a month per entity she owes just to keep the creditors at bay. And because her husband is diabetic, he'll very likely need more care and currently cannot work.

There's already been one fundraiser, but it's not nearly enough to cover what she owes.

[dflprincess]

6. Be careful how you catorgorize people

my friend ran up her credit cards helping her parents pay medical bills. I'll bet a lot of people do that before they resort to bankruptcy.

And, the reason it's not in the health insurance bill (if you mean HR3200), is that the high out pocket expenses it allows will mean people will still use their credit cards to pay medical bills. This bill is nothing but a gift to both the insurance and credit card companies. We're still screwed.

[yodoobo]

10. It would be redundant

Medical debt is no different than any other unsecured debt and is absolutely dischargeable in a ch.7 today.