Medical Mayhem - The Chapter 7 side of medicine
- Las Lugosi
- Jun 23, 2024
- 5 min read

Approximately 41% of Americans have some sort of debt due to medical issues - either direct debt from medical procedures or debt piling up due to their inabilities to earn an income due to medical issues.
Medical debt is a form of unsecured debt that is not tied to property or assets, kind of like credit cards. As such, it can be discharged under Chapter 7 Bankruptcy protection and despite Chapter 7 remaining on a credit report for 10 years, prohibiting someone from being able to borrow money or borrow money on more favorable terms, filing for bankruptcy protection from debilitating debt might be the only way out for some people. As time goes on from the Chapter 7, those borrowing terms ease and become more favorable to the point where after 5-6 years some lenders will simply disregard it, if the borrower has maintained a steadily improving credit score since filing. 66% of all chapter 7 bankruptcies filed in 2019 were due to medical bills or debt as a result of medical issues.
And just like with everything else, there is an inevitable stigma attached to filing chapter 7 bankruptcy protection - but if you read the name again "BANKRUPTCY PROTECTION" it says it right in the name of the process. It is designed to give people the opportunity to start over and with literally not a credit to their name. There should be no shame attached to someone using the law, legal protections afforded to them by the law, to navigate their options because companies who extend the debt, will certainly use every legal protection afforded to them to try to collect on it. What's good for the goose is good for the gander - the law says individuals have the right to petition the court for relief under Title 11 US Code, Chapter 7. Individuals who qualify for debt relief, and want to explore that option after careful consideration, should not be made to feel shamed or otherwise looked down upon for wanting to start over. People who make comments intended to shame debt victims don't understand the enormous burden associated with starting over.
The best way to explain it is... imagine arriving in Ellis Island to a strange land, starting your life with nothing but a suitcase full of dreams. But but but... you got the care! You were charged for the care you received! You need to pay your debts... so goes this outdated, puritanical idea designed to shame someone into paying. "Get a second job! Get a third job!" Abandon hope of ever seeing your kids. Work 16 hours a day. Sacrifice your health, your life, your sanity to pay a debt that is so unique in the world, that only our country actually enforces it upon her citizens. You will never hear two people from Finland complaining about having to get a second job to pay off crippling medical bills. You know why? Because it doesn't exist there. At some point, we have to start looking at healthcare not as a business, but as a way to prolong life and that privilege should not just be extended to those folks who can afford to write checks for 100,000 dollars or more.
The United States spends almost twice as much per capita on healthcare than any other wealthy nation or 1st world nation if you will. But we also have the lowest life expectancy, about 6 years shorter than our counterparts in other wealthy nations, the highest suicide rate and the most propagandized health care availability of any other comparable country. We also have the highest rate of chronic disease and the highest increase in premature deaths due to the pandemic since 2021. Americans in general pay more, a LOT more for medical care than their counterparts in other developed countries. On average, Americans pay approximately 12,300 dollars per person for medical care as of 2021, the next country is Germany, trailing us at 40% lower at 7383 dollars per person. Sweden comes in at $6262, Canada with their much maligned "socialism" system at $5905, the UK is next with $5387, Italy at roughly $4000 and South Korea rounding out the top 7 at $3900. YET, despite the sky-high costs of healthcare, we are receiving quality of healthcare that places us 6th on the list! The old adage of you get what you pay for certainly doesn't apply in this case.
This is on top of the fact that the projected baseline for the next ten years for US government spending on healthcare for Americans is to be at $25 trillion dollars.
You have to wonder, with spending like that by the government, why are Americans having to shoulder any burden for medical care at all? Let alone crippling debt that leads 10,000+ bankruptcies to be filed for protection under the law from medical bills? In other developed countries it is unheard of for someone to suffer from such debt resulting from medical expenses. Other nations have solved the problem of medical care by ensuring their citizens are not having to commit financial hara-kiri due to medical care bills. It is only the United States that, despite spending trillions of dollars every year, fails to provide reasonably priced, quality healthcare to her citizens. With prices that we pay as Americans, we should be number 1 on the list of quality healthcare not number 6! When we go get medical care, a lot of the staff shouldn't be so overworked and underpaid that they treat patients as cattle because they get treated like dirt by their billionaire employers who are only concerned about the bottom line.
What we get instead of being number one, is a lower quality care, where a doctor barely walks by a patient's room let alone stop for a chat, nurses work ungodly hours and hospitals are run like for-ultra-profit businesses where the first person after being admitted you meet is the finance coordinator wanting to know how you are going to pay for your care. Not a nurse - certainly not a doctor. You might be lucky enough to see a doctor at some point but probably not.
When I bring this topic up to some people, some of the most asinine responses I get revolve around a theoretical ability they want to preserve in the name of capitalism that they will use at some point to be wealthy and when that point arrives, they will want to resent paying taxes for the medical care of "deadbeats". So, some people think, that despite being broke now, they will be rich some day, and the last thing they will want to do at that point is to pay the medical bills of other broke people.
But here is a fun fact. The VAST majority of our fellow citizens will never be wealthy. They will never be millionaires. They will never have to worry about paying an estates tax. Or experience a crippling federal income tax burden at the cost of their theoretical small business growing and thriving, that they will start and will thrive if not for the taxes levied on them. Because that is the only thing keeping them back from becoming wealthy entrepreneurs. Right? The notion of having to pay taxes. Sure it is.
All those ideas are highly theoretical in real life and again, the VAST majority of our fellow citizens will never have to worry about paying taxes for someone's medical care because they will never have a thriving company that they will start at some point. That is not pessimism - that is reality. You know what else is reality? The same folks protesting the theoretical idea of having to pay taxes for a healthcare system, and refusing to endorse such an idea, based on their principles, the very same people will be in a very real possibility of one medical condition away from having to declare bankruptcy because the medical bills they are saddled with, as a result of a serious medical issue, are piling up and threatening their sanity.
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