Posted on 11/13/2013 7:11:28 AM PST by Incorrigible
Tue, Nov 12 2013
By Elizabeth Dilts
(Reuters) - An Occupy Wall Street spin-off group has bought up $14.7 million worth of Americans' personal medical debt and forgiven it over the last year as part of its Rolling Jubilee project, the group announced Monday.
The Rolling Jubilee project, organized by Occupy Wall Street's Strike Debt group, has so far spent $400,000 to buy the debt, in the process relieving 2,693 people of the money they owed for medical services Occupy thinks should be free.
"Think of it as a bailout of the 99 percent by the 99 percent," a post on the Rolling Jubilee project's website said.
The project, which launched on November 15, 2012, raises money through small, individual contributions, and then uses that money to purchase distressed and defaulted debt from the lenders, who in this case are hospitals or medical groups.
The lenders are willing to sell it very cheaply, often for less than five cents on the dollar, because they think there is little chance they will be able to collect.
Andrew Ross, a member of Occupy's Strike Debt group and a professor at New York University, said the group was able to buy debt at a 50-to-1 ratio.
The group receives almost no information about the people whose debt they buy - only an address, Ross said. The group mails a letter to each address explaining the project and that the person's debt has been "canceled," Ross said.
The group does not work directly with debtors.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Well stune my beeber! Is Occupy actually doing something good with a purpose?
Insanity is free too!
I’d be willing to bet they are buying off student loans of OFA activists.
I see the phrase “stune my beeber” allot around here what does it mean?
Once again we have a lying headline.
Occupy Wall Street buys $15 million of Americans’ medical debt
When actually ... the group “has so far spent $400,000 to buy the debt...”
I smell $oros or maybe Buffet. They never put out a dime out without expecting big returns. You don't sell out captured jews property for pennies on the dollar if you have compassion for your fellow man.
Why would they do that?
The regime is going to hand out student loan forgiveness coupons when the kiddos start whining that the Death Panels off’d grandma.
We would tell you, but since you’ve been banned or suspended - what’s the use?
Like the others over the years:
*** ASH ALERT ***
A moose bit my sister
I'm going to take a shower, let me know if there's any updates
The whole "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" meme (though that was started outside of FR)
And of course there are dozens more.
They have a website, with audited financial statement.
It’s suspicious of course, but this is far more than I expected.
http://rollingjubilee.org/transparency/#operations
Journalistic license!
The headline could have been “Doctors and hospitals forgive $14.3 million in debt with $400K from semi-slackers”
My niece was dating a OFA activist although I couldn’t prove it.
He told her not to worry about racking up student loans for her Masters/Phd as there are so many forgiveness programs.
Fortunately she dumped the creep.
Whice reveals how unlikely it was that this debt was ever going to be paid back in the first place. Creditors don't give a 5000% discount on debt they think they could ever collect on.
They apparently did buy $15 mil. worth of debt for $400K.
It was old debt, on the verge of being written-off. So they paid pennies on the dollar.
No. Dig a little deeper and I’m sure we’ll find some of that dough makes it to political campaign funds. That the people who benefited are not random people but probably friends and family of the movement.
I bet you a nice local church could have taken 10% of that and done 100x more good than they have.
Isn’t it funny they don’t name names?
Just some magical fairy in la la land.
But, to me, it seems like an futile and pointless excercise - buying bad debt at 2 cents a buck and retiring it.
To what end? I guess it's symbolic or something. They think it meaningful, like wearing a mask from one of the most craptastic movies ever, or doing an interpretive dance to John Lennon's Imagine. Or wearing wooden shoes and playing a Peruvian pan flute.
Actually, it is very cheap advertising to help rehabilitate their image. Very cynical, as a poster noted above - lenders & hospitals had already forgiven, or written off 95% of these loans - OWS tries to take credit for that.
Where are these deadbeats getting this kind of money???
We’re talking trivial amounts here, certainly for NYC area.
There are foundations and wealthy folks who spray donations around like confetti.
Their audited statement shows numbers mid 6 figures.
Don’t confuse the “amount” of debt they’ve purchased with the pennies on the dollar they are actually paying.
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