• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    the hospital went to court to garnish 35% of her wages. She works at McDonalds.

    Not that I question the unsourced anecdotes of the God account, but I’d be genuinely curious to see a business that thought an astronomical legal bill would be worth garnishing the wages of a service sector worker.

    As someone with family in the legal profession and the medical billing profession, it’s crazy to think of the cost-benefit of pursuing this kind of claim given the return expected. Hospitals write off millions a year in “bad debt”, because collection is consistently more expensive than the real value of these claims.

      • Dozzi92@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Making up stories to prove a position only weakens the position, IMO. We have plenty of real life stories why the healthcare indsutry (shouldn’t even have to call it an industry) is disgusting without needing to fabricate things.

    • Carrot@lemmy.today
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      4 months ago

      My brother in law had a medical bill that was supposed to be covered by insurance, but they didn’t pay. (A small-ish bill of a few thousand dollars) His bill was sent to collections, and they hounded him for years, despite him having in writing that the insurance and hospital both agreed that the insurance was supposed to cover it. After 8 years, they started garnishing his wages. This is when he decided to get a lawyer involved, and he was able to successfully sue the hospital for garnishing wages illegally. The hospital had to pay out 30K.

      All that to say, hospitals aren’t always acting intelligently or legally.

      • Dozzi92@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        How did they garnish his wages without having a court involved? They would had to have sued him already in court.

    • CaptDust@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      Can hospitals still sell their debts to third party collection agencies? Those groups seem like exactly the type to garnish McD wages.