MOVIE SCORES…. 1. Cavatina….score of The Deer Hunter I remember sitting in the back row of a small movie house at the end of Deer Hunter, and crying my eyes out at this piece. It somehow evokes all the aspirations of each main character in the movie – and the terrible disappointments for each and…
Let’s say that a health policy is advertised as follows: Fast forward — you have a serious illness, and wind up with a $40,000 hospital bill. You pay the first $7,000, which is your deductible…. then you pay coinsurance – 20% of the remaining $33,000, or $6,600….. finally, the insurer pays the remainder, which…
Here’s how…. 1. Opposition to Broad Forgiveness: The administration has stated that “Taxpayers—not students and parents—must not be forced to repay student loans that do not belong to them.” This administration is broadly opposed to presidential-level debt cancellation plans. 2. Ending Repayment Plans: The administration is moving to terminate certain existing income-driven repayment (IDR) plans,…
RIP Medical Debt has become prominent in the fight against health care debt burdens. Once the funders purchase these debts, their next step is always to cancel them. This should be a blessed event for the families who are currently in debt. However — are these efforts delivering on their promise? Not completely, according…
There are 20 million payday and car title loans made each year…….and their “track record” is extremely ugly. Given this hideous record of undesired, undeniable consequences, numerous cities and states have tried to regulate the interest rates on these loans. In the face of such regulation, what did the payday loan industry do? In some…
Student loan debtors are very nervous about their new higher loan payments. If they cannot get “income-based repayment” — for whatever reason– the new payments may be economically back-breaking. I have had borrowers ask me if they could declare bankruptcy. Until a couple of years ago, my answer was that they would probably fail. In…
Payday loans nationwide are responsible for a large percentage of the really awful, disastrous, family-killing debts that trap low-income Americans. Payday lenders will gladly tell you about the problems they face, and the costs they have to cover. These loans are massively profitable, nonetheless, for everyone from multinationals to Indian tribes. Lenders blame their high…
Republicans generally don’t care about medical debt. They consider it their primary mission to lower federal spending. They count on Medicaid recipients being a pretty passive bunch — many do not vote at all, much less vote about health care programs. The Republican One Big Beautiful Bill Act would slash $1.1 trillion from Medicaid, the…
The issue of student loan forgiveness is really the province of the Democratic Party. An astonishing percentage of Republicans (at least astonishing to me) take the attitude of “You made your bed, now lie in it.” Republicans argue that taxpayers would bear the cost of defaults on federal loans. They also argue that it is unfair to those…
This new book looks like a great one ……. Debt’s Grip: Risk and Consumer Bankruptcy by Pamela Foohey, Robert M. Lawless, and Deborah Thorne Debt’s Grip uses eleven years of court records and surveys to describe what it means to live in financial precarity in the United States. Bankruptcy filers describe the privations and struggles they suffered. It documents…