Should medical debt be bought and sold in America?
On Point | Podcast
WBUR
4.2 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 21 September 2023
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
More than 100 million people in America have medical debt. Some of those trying to help have to resort to debt buying companies. We learn how the debt buying industry works, and who wins and who loses. Noam Levey joins Meghna Chakrabarti.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Support for this podcast comes from Celebrity Series, inviting you to Jazz Along the Charles, |
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| 0:17.8 | River Esplanade, visit JazzAlongTheCharles.org. |
| 0:22.7 | Funding for this podcast comes from MathWorks, creators of MATLAB and Simulink Software, |
| 0:28.5 | celebrating the pace of engineering and science, learn more at MathWorks.com. |
| 0:34.5 | Latissia Garcia's back was giving her trouble. |
| 0:38.4 | She was 21 at the time and her back hurt so badly. |
| 0:41.9 | Eventually she went to the hospital where she lived in Orange, California. |
| 0:46.0 | My back was hurting a lot. |
| 0:47.6 | I think I just got it like had an infection, like a UTI infection, but they did all these |
| 0:54.0 | scans or whatever. |
| 0:55.0 | Like they didn't even say anything to me or like we'll talk to you a medic or if you |
| 0:58.9 | don't have anything to your cell or something, you know. |
| 1:03.0 | Hospital staff did give her some medication for the urinary tract infection and then they |
| 1:07.6 | sent her home without giving her a bill. |
| 1:10.7 | That's fairly standard practice in the United States. |
| 1:13.5 | Medical treatment first, no real discussion of costs, receive bill later. |
| 1:18.4 | Latissia was familiar with that process. |
| 1:21.0 | She's been on Medi-Cal, the state's public health insurance her entire life. |
| 1:25.9 | The back pain resolved in a few days. |
| 1:28.6 | Latissia believed she'd put the problem behind her, especially because she says she never |
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