Medical Robbery

A sad story came on the radio last night about a couple who fell on hard times during the Recession. With the family income down, they decided to drop their health insurance. With precision bad timing, the wife started developing debilitating headaches. Persisting for some time, her husband convinced her to get them checked out in order to rule out anything really serious. So she underwent a series of diagnostic tests at a hospital. They ruled out anything other than migraines and was billed some $20,000 for services rendered. That's $20,000 they didn't have.

The crux of the story is that creditors can now garnish wages for all sorts of reasons. What used to be a means of collection restricted to child support, fines, and the like, can now be employed for consumer debt. So the collectors for the hospital began to garnish the lady's wages. For someone already having trouble make ends meet, this was a rude surprise. Presumably at the rate of a few hundred dollars a month, these garnishments will continue for years: America's broken healthcare market is breaking individuals.

The story made me wonder if collectors are preparing garnishment of my own wages for my son's emergency room bills. They have been eerily quiet, with no response to my protest over the level of charges. Maybe their greetings are going to show up in my paycheck.