Liberals often claim that the cure for crime is to expand social-welfare programs.  They say we must first address economic exploitation, male and white supremacy, and homophobia in order to reduce violent crime.  Other culprits for ‘mass incarceration’ include a biased legal system, early childhood mistreatment, and draconian drug enforcement.   However — in the 1960’s, Chinese immigrants had the lowest average incomes in California…about $4,000 a year. At that time, the total number of Chinese in state prisons was five. No one proposed that we “ramp up social spending”,  or “provide affordable housing” to the Chinese, in effect to keep…

Debt vultures are nothing new in America – especially in health care. Collection firms can buy medical debts for pennies on the dollar, and then they try aggressively to collect the full amount. However, this ugly business model also operates on an international scale. I refer to the ‘Vulture funds’  — who have spent decades honing a predatory playbook, designed to extract maximum profits out of struggling, debt-ridden countries. The vulture funds business model is based on….  Billionaire Paul Singer – a longtime patron of Supreme Court judge Samuel Alito — has made exorbitant profits this way.   Singer was the…

To appreciate this statement, one must first wade through the complexity of Medicare accounting. Medicare Part A (hospital insurance) is funded with a tax of 2.90% total on all payroll income, plus an extra .90% on income that exceeds $250,000. For the first thirty years of Medicare, the annual receipts from payroll taxes exceeded the benefits paid out. The government created a paper “trust fund” with these surpluses. This was good publicity for the stability of Medicare Part A. The surpluses were invested in Treasury bonds. The Medicare trust fund thus holds a combination of current receipts and previously purchased…

A little-known area of financial abuse involves “structured settlement” annuities.  A structured settlement is often used in compensation for injuries or accidents – i.e. car crashes, medical malpractice, and class-action lawsuits. The victim is set up to receive their money through periodic payments –this is the ‘structure’. For example, the recipient might get $2,000 a month to age 65, and $1,000 a month thereafter.  There is not a lump sum cash advance –which is a good thing. There are many stories of lump sums being dissipated all too fast, with huge resulting debts.  Most attorneys and judges advocate for structured…

Student loan forgiveness can be quite confusing.  Here is a brief overview: Back in 2020, the Biden administration announced a plan to forgive $10,000 per debtor, for virtually the entire student debtor population – about 44 million borrowers. (The amount would be $20,000 if a student had been poor enough originally to also receive a Pell Grant.)  A married couple with student debts could be earning $250,000 a year today – but they would still have received $10,000 apiece in loan forgiveness. This might harvest votes in wealthy suburbs, but it seemed excessive to Republican opponents. This plan relied on…

Readers may remember the controversial 2015 shooting of Walter Scott, a 50-year-old black man,  in South Carolina.  A policeman was convicted for murder in the case, after a video surfaced showing him shooting Scott from behind. But few people ask: “Why was Walter Scott running away?” The sad explanation: child support. Scott had been repeatedly sent to jail for failure to pay child support. By the time of his death, he owed $18,000, and there was a warrant out for his arrest.  He had ended up in a vicious cycle: he couldn’t pay child support because he couldn’t hold a job,…

2023 was overall a good year for student debtors, even with some legislative reversals. However, borrowers are still receiving phone calls, emails, letters, and/or texts offering them relief from their federal student loans, or warning them that student loan forgiveness programs would end soon.  Usually, the so-called student loan debt relief companies offering these types of services don’t offer any relief at all. Often they’re just fraudsters who are after your money. Here are some examples of the false claims made in these communications: Communications using this type of aggressive advertising to lure borrowers are NOT coming from the U.S. Department of…

If you are concerned about medical debt, you have to start with the hospitals. Of the six million Americans who owe more than $5,000 in medical debt, 72 percent attribute their debt to bills from acute care, such as a single hospital stay or treatment for an accident.  There is a movement to limit medical debt…..but  it is inconsistent across the states.  That’s no surprise. The American hospital system has always been an unwieldy combination of private funding, public funding, federal and state regulations, and charity. Medical debt is not inevitable, however. We Americans are too cheap to establish straightforward…

A Kaiser Foundation survey on 9-29-23 makes it clear– we are seeing a large increase in insurance claim denials.  When insurance companies deny claims, patients eventually pay the price. These bills can easily turn into medical debt, with troubling consequences; people take steps that put their health at further risk.    1 in 7 people with medical debt have even been denied medical care because of their debt.  The insurance companies themselves admit that 41 million in-network claims were declined during the 2021 plan year. Among the for-profit insurers who sell on Healthcare.gov,  17% of  patient’s claims were denied. According to Kaiser,…

A non-profit firm called Upsolve enables many bankruptcy filers to pay nothing in legal fees. Here’s the background: Chapter 7 bankruptcy attorneys usually require their clients to pay in full before filing the case. You cannot blame them…if a lawyer does not collect their fees up front, their bill could later be discharged along with the rest of the client’s debts. This creates a big barrier for low-asset, low-income bankruptcy filers. They must come up with $2000 or more in cash before filing Chapter 7. But now there is good news. Upsolve was born in 2018 with seed funding from…

Small claims courts have been a fixture throughout America for over seventy years. In the state of New York, for example, there are Small Claims Courts in each of the 62 counties — including at least one in each of the five boroughs of New York City. Most other states have similar coverage. In small claims court, there is usually a single judge with no jury and no witnesses. The courts are typically informal – designed to make the legal process accessible and affordable. The judge usually asks the plaintiff and the defendant to simply “Tell us your story in…

The most frequent settings for medical credit cards have been dentist’s offices, cosmetic surgery, veterinarians, hearing services, vision services and primary care. However, the cards are increasingly offered to cover surgeries and emergency services provided at hospitals and doctors’ offices. (Some of the newer lenders are owned by private equity, which to me is automatically a call for concern.) The business appeal of these cards is that providers don’t have to be in the financing or debt collection business. They receive full payment quickly. Some products advertise to providers that they’ll be paid in two business days, while others advertise…