Medical Debt Special with Astra Taylor and Elizabeth Bruenig

Current Affairs

Comedy, Government, News, Culture, Politics

4.4 • 645 Ratings

🗓️ 26 January 2021

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Finance editor Sparky Abraham is joined by contributing editor Eli Massey, activist and filmmaker Astra Taylor, and journalist Elizabeth Bruenig to discuss the American medical debt crisis—who's behind it, what's being done about it, and potential paths to eradicating it. "Churches Step In Where Politicians Will Not": https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/opinion/covid-medical-debt-church-charity.html "A Saint's Sins": https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/16/opinion/junipero-serra-catholic-saint.html https://debtcollective.org/ This episode was edited by Dan Thorn of Pink Noise Studios in Somerville, MA.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome current affairs bird feed. This is your finance editor Sparky Abraham.
0:04.0	Thank you for joining us for an extremely special bonus episode. I'm very, very excited about it.
0:09.2	It's about debt, which is the thing that I'm always very excited about. That sounds weird to say, but it is what it is.
0:15.3	I'm here with contributing editor Eli Massey. Hello, Eli. And we have two very special guests. Two of my heroes, I've been
0:23.6	really excited about having this conversation. First, we've got Liz Brunig, who is a Pino Writer from
0:28.9	New York Times, right, and also co-host of the Brunich's podcast, one of my favorite podcasts.
0:33.2	That's my real gig, yeah. That's your real gig. Thanks for joining us, Liz.
0:38.3	And we've also got writer, activist, co-founder of the debt collective, Astra Taylor, returning,
0:43.5	I think returning current affairs podcast guest, right, Astra?
0:46.0	You were on before to talk about the movie?
0:47.6	I was.
0:48.2	I've been on before.
0:49.2	Second time.
0:50.0	Second time.
0:50.8	Thank you both for joining us.
0:52.3	I think what really got me started thinking about
0:56.8	medical debt again lately was the article that you wrote, Liz, churches step in where politicians
1:03.9	will not. Why do we need acts of charity to rescue Americans from crushing medical bills?
1:09.5	I don't think that we've really talked a lot about
1:11.3	medical debt on the current affairs podcast before. Can you kind of set the scene for us?
1:15.7	Like, what do things look like out there with medical debt right now? And what was your article
1:19.9	about? So I started noticing news coverage and local news outlets. I have all kinds of
	...

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