Breast Cancer Survivor Jailed for Unpaid $280 Medical Bill
April 24th, 2012 by Sylvia Moore Leave a reply » In a throwback to the Victorian era, hard economic times are creating a comeback for debtors’ prisons, despite the fact that they have been ruled unconstitutional. But legal loopholes allow collections agencies to aggressively go after people who owe money. The Associated Press recently reported that an Illinois woman was sent to jail for an outstanding medical bill of $280, even though the bill was sent in error. Here is yet another horrid consequence of not having a universal, public healthcare system in the United States.In more than one-third of states, people can be sent to jail if they can’t or won’t pay outstanding debts. Though California does place burdensome penalties on some debtors, the state isn’t as extreme as Illinois. As far as I know, there aren’t any cases here in the Golden State of people in jail for medical debt, thank goodness. But the fact that anywhere in this country, people are still being penalized for being poor makes America’s insistence that it is the “greatest country in the world” ring hollow. A truly great country does not put people in jail for debts, medical or otherwise. And a truly great country provides health coverage for all its people, making headlines like “Breast Cancer Survivor Jailed for Unpaid $280 Medical Bill” non-existent.
Sylvia@CaliforniaOneCare.org
hattip to Susan Rowe
14 comments:
Howie's the fella I wanna follow!
WoOt!
Howard is the best. and first!
thank you for posting. I haven't had much of a connection all day. I keep dropping off a every few minutes.
this is so sad, but sadly no surprise. as Reed woukd say, healthcare is a human right.
You betcha'--and now I am off to hit the bed--and try a book --of some kind!
Good night all--sleep well!
Just made a couple of major steps forward with FF11 -- I just downloaded and activated an extension that will keep facebook from running javascript. It's speeded me up considerable. The other one is, I found the place to keep it from trying to load before I'm online, so I'm not getting the yaller caution signs for everything, but the actual icons -- so I can tell where I am!
In the 60's people rallied for equality and spoke truth to power, and much change took place.
Today we need to rally for sanity in healthcare and speak truth to insurance companies.
We need a Congress that gets it.
How are you helping to shift the balance in this year's elections?
I work at the polls. Here in Vermont we have good representation, but getting out the vote yields the strongest and most solid voice.
And speaking of healthcare...
I knocked it out of the park on Tuesday!
I had to go in for some routine bloodwork.
BP was good, blood sugar holding fine, and best of all turns out I brought my good cholesterol up 3 points to 43! I even lost 3 lbs since November. wOOt!
So, naturally, I (finally) had a few pieces of Easter candy! LOL!
Nice going listner! That's excellent!
Since Shirlee in NC said she was going to try a book - of some kind, I thought I'd do some shameless self promotion and promote Burt's book.
A couple of folks that said they started it, said that they liked the writing style very much. Now we're on tenterhooks until they read some more.
Anyway, you can see a blurb and the cover at www.createspace.com/3828895 or at Amazon (use search string "Burt Webb" because there are a TON of books with Rare Earth/Rare Earths in the title. Or, if you'd like a signed copy, write Burt at phoenix@eskimo.com.
Have to say: it's looking up with FF11 -- did a full disk check, a disk cleanup, a CCleaner, defrag, reset a couple of settings, got a new extension, and it was running pretty well last night -- no worse than 3.6. This morning, on trying to reconnect, the whole bidness crashed and I got the famous blue screen of death. . . . Since restarting, it's been beautiful. If that holds, plans to go back to 3.6 are off.
BTW, glad I aborted the Chrome download: while it was downloading, looked around the Chrome community -- got really tired of google just ignoring users pleas, and a lot of talk about "retraining" users to LIKE them. Very bad attitude in my view. And trooth? Adding one more dependency on google is scary to me. They remain my search engine, the are my blog -- they *won't be* my google plus, my email AND my browser. . . .
Good Late Morning all!
Puddle I am happy you are having better luck with Firefox 11.
I don't have much trouble with it--but I don't do all the wonderful things you do with your computer.
It is sad to see the days winding down at dfa--but love it here. It was stressful to read the "dyspeptic" tirades constantly.
(Thanks for that description, Puddle.)
Thanks again, JO
Began the day by scrubbing out the refrigerator and freezer.
No, we're not moving ;-),
it's a surprise for my husband's birthday.
Seriously, it's the kind of thing we get excited about around here.
Went out to get the mail and heard:
Redwinged Blackbirds!! It's Spring!!
Plus both Silky Dogwoods and the Red-twigged Dogwoods all finally have buds opening.
The Shad is in full glory, and all's right with the yard.
There's even a Great Big Bunny munching clover in the back yard. :-D
Happy day!!
Thanks, whitznd!
My news prompted a call from an old friend (of 30+ years) affirming me for standing up and changing my cholesterol numbers even though my doctor said it couldn't be done.
She told me a few horror stories from experiences a couple of years ago as her husband was dying of brain cancer. She had to really work to get his doc's office to TELL HER when things were happening, because with his tumor he wouldn't always remember to tell her. Communication hit a low point when he was admitted to the hospital at 11:30am and was in the ICU and she never heard about it until 6pm that night when he wasn't home from work yet and she investigated...!! You'd think docs and their staff who have patients with brain issues would know better.
On the other hand, his oncologist was wonderful and compassionate and affirming of their decisions...so much so that she wrote him a personal thank-you at the end, and he called her to say if he ever has the situation her husband did he hopes he has an advocate like her.
In the spirit of that, I just called the office of a nurse who has been great to work with this month and sang her praises.
Hurrah for nurses!
Shirlee, I'm running on a pretty old computer -- a 12 year old Dell. . . . It's had a memory upgrade, and been reformatted (my kid did it), but the hardware itself is creaky. Add to that that I'm on dialup with awful phone lines, and it's pretty important that the browser not add any issues of its own, lol!
Flip side: I think *having* to find ways to keep it all working has been very good brain exercise over the years: making them little synapses find new pathways has prolly been very good overall for my mental functioning.
I may worry about that too much, but my grandmother's mind went very early (mid fifties) and I've been scared of that happening to me my whole life. Same for my mother's Type II.
And listener: any doctor than thinks you can't bring down cholesterol without statins should turn in their doctor's badge, lol! Mine were pushing 245 with HDL around 30, when my doc suggested statins. I said, give me six months, a year, and let me try Atkins. She okayed it (which is good, if not, I'd have had a new doc!). In a year, I was down to 220 (HDL about the same). Ten years later total Cholesterol was 173 (and HDL lower 40s). Triglycerides at about 90. This last set of tests? Well, my total Cholesterol had gone UP! to 203. Guess why? Well, HDL counts as cholesterol, lol! and IT had gone up to 73! And BTW, my triglycerides are about 35. . . . Not recommending starvation as a methodology, grin, but its an ill wind. . . .
Bless you, Puddle, for re-posting the local (GSO) musicians and their great video.
While scrolling through You Tube to see what else was there--It was amazing--
"Baptists Against Amendment One" !!!
The most entertaining one is
"Amendment One--the Musical." Featuring
predictable characters --and a drop-in by George Washington. George himself is worth the watch.
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