Tag Archives | Debt

Hospitals Begin Planting Debt Collectors In Emergency Rooms

By on April 26, 2012 in News 36

254668516_97856d3d0fThe New York Times reports on a new model of emergency care—debt collectors posing as medical staff:

Hospital patients waiting in an emergency room or convalescing after surgery are being confronted by an unexpected visitor: a debt collector at bedside.

This and other aggressive tactics by one of the nation’s largest collectors of medical debts, Accretive Health, were revealed on Tuesday by the Minnesota attorney general, raising concerns that such practices have become common at hospitals across the country.

To patients, the debt collectors may look indistinguishable from hospital employees, may demand they pay outstanding bills and may discourage them from seeking emergency care at all. The attorney general, Lori Swanson, also said that Accretive employees may have broken the law by not clearly identifying themselves as debt collectors…

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Quebec Students Protest Against Austerity

By on April 21, 2012 in News 6

QuebecKaren Seidman and Kevin Dougherty write on the Montreal Gazette:

Attempts to have any kind of normalcy on the campus of the Universite de Montreal in the wake of an ongoing student strike completely unravelled on Wednesday after the administration was forced to retreat on its efforts to provide classes in striking departments for students who don’t support the boycott.

Tensions were high not just at U de M, but on many Quebec campuses, where there were clashes as students resisted hardline tactics to try to force them back to class during the tenth week of their protest over tuition increases of $1,625 over five years.

Injunctions taken by university administrations backfired as students found increasingly violent and disruptive ways to ensure campus activities could not resume, such as broken windows, vandalized art work and fire alarms going off during exams at U de M.

And, as many different groups involved in the dispute called on each other to condemn the growing use of violence and vandalism, it became clear that efforts at mediation could provoke militancy…

Read More: Montreal Gazette… Read the rest

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Marijuana Legalization Could Save U.S. $13.7 Billion Per Year

By on April 20, 2012 in News 17

Via the Huffington Post:

More than 300 economists, including three nobel laureates, have signed a petition calling attention to the findings of a paper by Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron, which suggests that if the government legalized marijuana it would save $7.7 billion annually by not having to enforce the current prohibition on the drug. The report added that legalization would save an additional $6 billion per year if the government taxed marijuana at rates similar to alcohol and tobacco.

That’s as much as $13.7 billion per year, but it’s still minimal when compared to the federal deficit, which hit $1.5 trillion last year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

While the economists don’t directly call for pot legalization, the petition asks advocates on both sides to engage in an “open and honest debate” about the benefits of pot prohibition.

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Austerity Drives Up Suicide Rate in Debt-Ridden Greece

By on April 12, 2012 in News 11

Apostolos PolyzonisThe banks are getting back all their money, so I guess a 40% increase in the suicide rate is the blood the Tree of Liberty requires to grow. Teo Kermeliotis reports on CNN:

When Apostolos Polyzonis’s bank refused to see him last September, the 55-year-old Greek businessman had just 10 euros ($13) in his pocket. Out of work and bankrupt, he thought all he could do with his remaining money was to buy a gas can.Desperate and angry, Polyzonis stood outside the bank in central Thessaloniki, in northern Greece, doused himself in fuel and surrendered to the flames.

“At that moment, I saw my life as worthless, I really didn’t care if I was going to live or die,” recalls Polyzonis, who says he was hit by financial troubles after the bank recalled a loan given to him for his business. “My sense of living was much lower than my sense of self-respect and pride, the fact that I had lost my right to be a free Greek,” adds Polyzonis.

… Read the rest

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Student Loans On The Rise — For Kindergarten

By on April 11, 2012 in News 5

play and playthingsWell, I suppose this makes sense in that school is supposed to prepare people for the rest of their lives. SmartMoney on a new trend:

It used to be that families first signed up for education loans when their child enrolled in college, but a growing number of parents are seeking tuition assistance as soon as kindergarten. Though data is scarce, private school experts and the small number of lenders who provide loans for kindergarten through 12th grade say pre-college loans are becoming more popular.

The loans can also be expensive. The interest rates — which can be fixed or variable — range from around 4% to roughly 20%. (Lower rates are given to parents with higher credit scores.)

… Read the rest

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Seven Big Economic Lies

By on January 27, 2012 in News 16

Do tax cuts for the rich trickle down to the rest of us? And does taxing the rich hurt the economy? Is Social security a Ponzi scheme? Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton, presents his list of seven popular-wisdom economic claims that are untrue. Feel free to debate.

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Forgive the Debt of The 99 Percent?

By on October 16, 2011 in News 42

“So my immodest proposal is simply this,” as posed by Alex Pareene on Salon.com:

Individuals and households in the bottom 99 percent who owe debt to any large financial institution that received federal government support during and after the 2008 crisis should see their debt forgiven. That would certainly stimulate the economy, as most people would suddenly find themselves with a great deal more money to spend on iPads (and food, and clothing, and housing, and healthcare). The debt can be forgiven by decree or if the government really wants to it can step in to pay it itself; I don’t much care either way. (Though it’d be nice to see it just wiped off the books, to enrage the banks.)

Let’s wipe the debt of the 99 percent off the books, tell the financial sector to eat it, and get on with our lives.

I’m by no means the first person to come up with this demand.

… Read the rest

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Abolish Student Loan Debt?

By on October 8, 2011 in News 104

Student DebtWriting for the journal Reclamations, George Caffentzis wonders why there is no movement in the United States to abolish our increasingly oppressive system of institutionalized student loan debt:

Debt has had a crushing impact on the lives of those who must take student loans to finance their university education in the US. For tuition fees that have been so notoriously high in private universities now are rising in public universities so quickly they are far out-pacing inflation. Average loan debt per student in the US has been much higher than in Europe (with the exception of Sweden), though recent developments there would indicate that this gap may soon no longer exist (Usher).

We should also take into account the fraudulent way in which the loans have been administered by the banks and the vindictiveness with which those who have been unable to pay back have been pursued by collection agents.

… Read the rest

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Where Does Debt Come From?

By on September 19, 2011 in News 8

Debt300dpiVia Naked Capitalism, a fascinating interview with economic anthropologist David Graeber about the history of debt over the last 5,000 years (and the oft-intertwined history of slavery):

Since antiquity the worst-case scenario that everyone felt would lead to total social breakdown was a major debt crisis; ordinary people would become so indebted to the top one or two percent of the population that they would start selling family members into slavery, or eventually, even themselves.

Well, what happened this time around? Instead of creating some sort of overarching institution to protect debtors, they create these grandiose, world-scale institutions like the IMF or S&P to protect creditors. They essentially declare (in defiance of all traditional economic logic) that no debtor should ever be allowed to default. Needless to say the result is catastrophic. We are experiencing something that to me, at least, looks exactly like what the ancients were most afraid of: a population of debtors skating at the edge of disaster.

… Read the rest

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Protecting Their Prosperity

By on September 18, 2011 in News 7

F-35Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:

Even though the U.S. military spends more than 6 times that of our next competitor (China), the GOP is still pushing the narrative that any more cuts in spending to the Pentagon’s budget would be “disastrous” and spell “doomsday” for the military. The Hill reports House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif) said he’d even be willing to support tax increases before more cuts to the military’s budget. Predictably, 13 freshmen Republicans on McKeon’s panel, many of which are Tea Party darlings, feel “enough is enough” and believe federal spending cuts need to come from entitlement programs.

McKeon said “It’s time to focus our fiscal restraint on the driver of our debt, not the protector of our prosperity.”

In addition to McKeon’s doomsday forecasting, Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) also voiced concerns earlier this month regarding proposed defense spending cuts. In a letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Chambliss warned that a “draconian budget cutting exercise” towards the F-35 fighter program would risk the United States’ advantage in aerial warfare.… Read the rest

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