THE DOCTRINE OF THE N.A.F.T.A. GLOBALIST DEMOCRATS IS TO SERVE THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS WITH ENDLESS WAVES OF INVADING 'CHEAP' LABOR SUBSIDIZED WITH WELFARE FUNDED BY TAXES ON MIDDLE AMERICA.
In many speeches, Mayorkas says he is building a mass migration system to deliver workers to wealthy employers and investors and “equity” to poor foreigners. The nation’s border laws are subordinate to elites’ opinion about “the values of our country,” Mayorkas claims.
Tuesday, April 28, 2020
THE PARASITE ECONOMY - MEDICAL-DEBT COLLECTION SHARKS
One Thing the Pandemic Hasn’t Stopped: Aggressive
Medical-Debt Collection
U.S.
hospitals are in the spotlight for being on the frontline of fighting the
pandemic. But in the shadows, debt collection operations continue, often by the
same institutions treating coronavirus patients, all while unemployment and
uncertainty soar.
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Darcel Richardson knows she’s fortunate in one sense: She still
has her job as a vocational counselor in Baltimore. But despite that, she won’t
be able to make her rent payment this month because she’s not getting her full
salary for a while. More than $400 per biweekly paycheck — about a quarter of
her after-tax income — has been siphoned off by Johns Hopkins University for
unpaid medical bills at one of its hospitals.
Richardson, 60, got word of the garnishment from her employer
just as the coronavirus pandemic was arriving in full force last month. “My job
was going to take the money out. They don’t want to get in trouble,” she said.
“I spoke with our payroll accountant, and the bottom line was, even though the
crisis had begun, they still had to pay my money to them.”
In a moment when hospitals nationwide are being heralded for
their role at the front lines of fighting the pandemic, some Americans continue
to experience a less favorable side of hospital operations: aggressive
collection for unpaid medical bills, even at a time when many of the debtors
are seeing their income plunge. Debt collection is occurring on other fronts as
well, over unpaid college and bank loans among others, prompting debates over
protecting people’s economic stimulus checks from collection agencies or
suspending garnishments outright. But collection by the very hospitals that are
treating coronavirus patients brings the health and economic exigencies of the
moment into especially stark relief.
In a few cases, hospitals have
brought new cases against former patients in recent weeks, such as in
Wisconsin, where Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee filed 46 small-claims lawsuits
even after the governor declared a state of emergency on March 12, and other
hospital systems in the state filed dozens more, according to a report
by Wisconsin Public Radio and Wisconsin Watch. Steve Schoof, Froedtert’s director of external communications,
told ProPublica in a statement that the hospital stopped filing small claims
suits on March 18. “Moving forward,” the statement continued, “Froedtert Health
will no longer be filing small claims suits for medical debt collection.
Unfortunately, there was a miscommunication that resulted in small claims
filings after March 18. We immediately rectified this miscommunication and
dismissed these small claims cases that were filed after March 18.”
Will banks,
landlords and other debt collectors work with people who’ve lost income because
of the coronavirus crisis? Help us find out.
More often, though, the collection stems from cases filed months
before the pandemic arrived, as the legal process grinds its way forward.
“Where debt collection is underway for pre-COVID medical debt, they will
continue to do that,” said Jenifer Bosco, a staff attorney for the National
Consumer Law Center.
In Richardson’s case, the debt stemmed from a two-day 2018 visit
to Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in southeast Baltimore, one of a string
of medical visits she has had to make over the years to deal with a knee injury
from a fall, a hip injury from a car accident, hernia repairs and back trouble.
She had insurance coverage through her job, which at the time was with the
state Division of Correction, but it left a balance of almost $1,000 for her to
pay. Richardson, who lives by herself in a modest apartment complex just east
of the city, started hearing from a collections lawyer for Hopkins last fall
and tried to work out a payment schedule with him, but she couldn’t make it
work.
“I just didn’t have the money,” she said. “I said to the lawyer,
I might be able to pay an amount monthly, but when it came time, I just didn’t
have it. What can you do when you’re caught between a rock and a hard place? I
prioritize. I’m going to try to pay my rent first, pay for gas and electric,
cellphone costs. And I’ve got to eat.”
The court judgment was finally entered against Richardson in
Baltimore City District Court in January: $923.21, plus $34 in court costs and
$138.49 in attorney’s fees. The notice of wage garnishment went out on March 6
— the day after Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan announced the state’s first three
coronavirus cases. The garnishment was confirmed by Richardson’s new employer,
the nonprofit drug treatment organization Gaudenzia, on March 16, the day that
Hogan decreed the closure of all bars, restaurants, gyms and movie theaters,
and three days after Richardson and her colleagues were barred by safety
precautions from providing counseling inside prisons. She now works at a small
treatment center that houses seven women, where social distancing is easier.
Johns Hopkins, by far the largest
private-sector employer in the state and the largest beneficiary of billionaire
Michael Bloomberg’s charitable giving, has long faced scrutiny for its
aggressive collection of medical debt, including from the many low-income
Baltimore residents it serves, who in theory should be able to qualify for the
hospital’s charity care programs. In 2008, The
Baltimore Sun reported that Hopkins
and other Maryland nonprofit hospitals had filed more than 32,000
debt-collection suits over the past five years, winning at least $100 million
in judgments. Last May, a coalition that includes the AFL-CIO and National
Nurses United, which has been trying to organize Hopkins nurses, released
a report finding that Hopkins had
launched 2,400 lawsuits in Maryland courts since 2009 against patients with
unpaid bills, increasing from 20 in 2009 to a peak of 535 in 2016.
In response to the 2019 report, Hopkins officials said they
offered considerable free and discounted services, and that “for patients who
choose not to pursue those options or who have a demonstrated ability to pay,
we will make every effort to reach out to them and to accommodate their
schedule and needs. In those rare occasions when a patient who has the ability
to pay chooses not to, we follow our state required policies to pursue
reimbursement from these patients.”
The cases have slowed in pace but not stopped altogether since
the report. Bayview, one of several hospitals under the Hopkins umbrella, has
filed about 60 cases over the past year, according to Maryland court records.
Dozens of them, including Richardson’s, remain open.
Kim Hoppe, vice president for communications for Johns Hopkins
Medicine, said in a statement that after looking into the matter, the medical
system has become aware of nine garnishments that went into effect in February
and March, and that it has now placed a “hold” on them. “Johns Hopkins remains
committed to providing affordable access to all patients in need of our care,
regardless of ability to pay,” Hoppe said. “We also make numerous efforts to
communicate with patients who have overdue bills. Typically, patients receive
more than a dozen contacts via mail or phone call along with multiple
opportunities to file for medical or financial hardship. At all points in that
process, patients are encouraged to speak with financial counselors; their
bills will be forgiven if they can show financial hardship or inability to
pay.”
Politicians have touted debt relief, but the various proposals
are patchwork. Many homeowners and renters won’t get much help; those
struggling with credit card, car and other loan payments will get none.
For Cheri Long, aggressive medical debt collection came with
less warning than it did for Richardson. Long, a nurse at an assisted living
center in northern West Virginia, had stopped by a Dollar General on March 23
to pick up some groceries for her kids and some requests for residents at the
center: prunes, caramel candies and adult diapers. When she went to pay with
her debit card, the machine told her she had insufficient funds. She checked
the account after leaving the store and found there had been a debit for about
$900. She assumed her account had been hacked and the funds would be restored.
In fact, the bank told her, her account had a hold on it from the magistrate
court.
She told the bank she had not received any notification. But
that night, a card was waiting in her mailbox alerting her that there was a
certified letter waiting for her at the post office. She picked the letter up
the next day and rushed to the magistrate court, and she learned that the
account had been garnished by West Virginia University Hospitals, the official
name for J.W. Ruby Memorial Hospital, the large nonprofit academic medical center
in Morgantown that is the flagship of the WVU Medicine system.
The bills were for care received by her husband, Seth — after a
motorcycle accident seven years ago and after a visit for alcohol rehab after
he had started drinking heavily upon losing his coal mining job three years
ago. He had insurance coverage at the time of both hospital stays, even
supplemental motorcycle insurance, but the coverage had left a balance of about
$3,500. Seth had gotten work at another mine but lost it again two years ago,
leaving the family relying on Cheri’s income, about $3,000 per month in
take-home pay. “Times are hard,” she said in an interview. “That [medical bill]
was my last priority. I didn’t think they would do anything over $3,500.”
The bank garnishment sent her into a panic. She was in tears at
the courthouse, pleading for someone to help her. She eventually filed for an
“affidavit for exemption” through the sheriff, seemingly got the garnishment
lifted temporarily and changed her direct deposit to another account to be on
the safe side. But when she went for groceries again on April 3, her card was
declined. Her account had been zeroed out again despite the exemption,
apparently due to a bureaucratic oversight.
She borrowed money for groceries and gas from her co-workers,
nursing aides who make minimum wage. Her father-in-law offered to cover the
house payment. And, on Easter Sunday, she started writing emails — to the
governor, to the attorney general. “It was a very depressing time,” she said
later. “I’m out working, busting my butt, and they’re going to take my money.”
At last, she got help. The National Consumer Law Center put her
in touch with a local legal aid lawyer, Jennifer Wagner with Mountain State
Justice. Wagner filed a lawsuit on behalf of Long, arguing that it was
unconstitutional to seize her property when the closure of the court system
undermined her ability to seek due process.
On April 15, Preston County Judge
Steven L. Shaffer issued an emergency order halting seizure of both Long’s bank
account and her imminent stimulus funds, thereby restoring the money already
taken. “Seizure of personal property during the court closure and stay at home
order and related state of emergency ... violates due process of law,” he wrote
in the order, first
reported by the Times West Virginian newspaper.
In a statement, WVU Medicine spokeswoman Angela Knopf said that
the system gave guidance to its third-party collection vendors in March to be
mindful of the economic impact of the pandemic crisis in seeking repayment, but
it did not order them to hold back entirely. “At WVU Medicine, we need to
balance our need to liquidate patient balances with the needs of our community,
especially during times of disruption,” read the guidance. “Collection calls
and letters can continue. However, please take a soft approach to calls and
express the compassion that WVU Medicine has for our community during this
difficult time. We do not want to beat our patients up as they are sequestered
in their homes, compounding the stress of the current situation. We want to be
a partner in helping them through this.” The guidance instructed vendors not to
file any new lawsuits for “at least the next 60 days,” but it does not
explicitly address the garnishing of accounts from cases launched before the
crisis.
Wagner, the legal aid lawyer, said she is getting calls from
more than a dozen other people in the area facing collection from the hospital
and is considering filing a class-action lawsuit over the garnishments. “We’re
contemplating seeking broader relief because of our concerns that they haven’t
stopped, notwithstanding the order,” she said. “It’s actually going to dissuade
people from seeking medical care during a time when it’s really important to
seek medical care, and that is really alarming.”
Governors have issued orders temporarily
banning wage and bank garnishments in several states, including in Illinois,
Massachusetts and Washington. The Texas Supreme Court has decreed that any new garnishment orders not be served until after
May 7. Governors or state attorneys general have taken the more limited step of
barring the seizure of stimulus checks during bank account garnishments in some
other states, among them California, New York and Ohio. But this leaves several
dozen states where medical debt collection can still carry forward, with or
without the ability to seize stimulus checks in the process.
Meanwhile, though, another Memphis hospital, Baptist Memorial,
has kept up aggressive collection during the economic crisis. The Shelby County
court system lists about 20 garnishments for Baptist Memorial debts initiated
last month alone, some of them for debts going back more than a decade.
In Memphis,
Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare has brought 8,300 lawsuits for unpaid medical
bills in just five years.
One of the Baptist Memorial targets found out that she was about
to have her paycheck garnished for a 13-year-old debt when she received a
letter in the mail from a lawyer seeking to represent her in the matter. “It’s
just been very hard,” said the woman, who asked that her name not be used. “I
had offered a settlement, but they wouldn’t work with me. They’re playing
hardball.”
A Baptist Memorial spokeswoman said in a written response,
“These are not new cases; these judgments were made months ago. You’re looking
at renewals that were filed in January — well before the first known COVID case
was diagnosed in the U.S. If any of these people lost their jobs, we would stop
trying to collect. If they have other financial issues, they can contact us and
we’ll work with them. We have modified payment plans for hundreds of patients
since the COVID pandemic began.”
Critics of the hospital debt
collection say they are aware that hospitals may be more sympathetic creditors
at the current moment, when they are strapped by the demands of treating
victims of the pandemic, while losing much of their usual business. Johns
Hopkins, for one, announced this week that it was running a $100
million deficit, due largely to a dropoff in
the elective medical procedures that provide much of its revenue base.
But the National Consumer Law Center notes that hospitals
nationwide are receiving $100 billion in the federal relief packages to help
recover some of the costs of the crisis. And Cecilia Behgam, an AFL-CIO
researcher who helped produce the 2019 report on Hopkins, notes that collection
on unpaid bills makes up just a tiny sliver of hospital revenue — for a giant
institution like Hopkins, typically less than one-tenth of a percent. “This is
not making a significant difference in the budget of these hospitals,” she
said.
Behgam also noted that in cities such as Baltimore and Memphis,
the lawsuits and garnishments are being brought mostly against exactly the
demographic that has been shown to be most vulnerable in the pandemic:
lower-income African Americans with underlying health conditions. “These are
people who are already disproportionately feeling the impact of the epidemic,”
she said.
In Baltimore, Darcel Richardson says she has so far managed to
talk the managers of her apartment complex into letting her pay the outstanding
balance of her rent once the garnishments stop. They might even be willing to
cancel the usual fees for late payment, she said. “I am a firm believer in
trusting God,” she said. “He’ll meet my needs. So far, he’s still kept the roof
over my head.”
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