Posted on 06/06/2025 5:29:11 PM PDT by ChicagoConservative27
Cook County has erased nearly $665 million in medical debt for local residents since launching the effort in 2022, according to new figures released Thursday.
County leaders are celebrating the latest milestone of the program, which has so far helped almost 557,000 people have some of their debt abolished.
The effort has relieved the most debt for people on Chicago’s South and West sides and in the south and west suburbs.The amount erased ranges from around $600 to $4,000 on average per person depending on where they live.
(Excerpt) Read more at wbez.org ...
Common Core Math has it’s uses!
So all of the medical staff worked for nothing? Fascinating.
I wonder how we can get clinical staff to work for free where we live.
At the end of the day, this was $665M healthcare consumed and not paid for by the consumer. No matter what they say in Chicago, there is no free lunch.
If one group gets something they didn’t pay for, another group pays for something they didn’t get. Nothing is free.
So how exactly did the “erase” the debt?
Did they actually pay it off? Of course not.
Did they extort the health care providers into forgiving it and passing the balance on to their actual paying customers? As Hans Landa would say: That’s a bingo!
All those shootings and murders on the south side do cost money...cleanup too.
A combination of using Federal money and a so called non profit buys old medical debt and settles it for a lesser amount via tax payer money from the state...The debt is not just erased.
No. The medical staff got paid. It came out of the hard working tax payers' pocket.
Good idea. Have the employees and doc’s and tech’s work for FREE. That’ll work. S/O
Exactly.
Nothing is free. Someone is doing the labor and they expect to be paid for it.
Under the radar reparations.
Chicago brings in 18.7 billion a year in revenue. 665 million is Pretty much left over change considering it’s over multiple years.
How can there be medical debt? Obamacare took care of all that,
You can’t erase debt. you can transfer it to someone else, but the money has been loaned and presumable spent. they only way to “erase” debt is to pay it back.
After this, only an idiot would pay for medical care in Cook County
They will just tack it onto wnite peoples bills, like they always do. The $200 tylenol becomes $400
So reparations.
“Cook County partners with the non-profit Undue Medical Debt, which buys old uncollectable bills from hospitals and others for pennies on the dollar, and then forgives it. With $1, Undue Medical Debt leaders have said they can relieve as much as $100 of medical debt or more at a time.”
What a sweet deal! The person gets outta debt and the providers get stiffed.
[WBEZ: Is that pronounced “we beez”?]
This is where the Medicaid cuts will hit. Hospitals are required to treat people when they come into the Emergency Room. But a lot of them have no insurance (even in health care paradises like MA, where everyone is supposed to have health insurance! Ha Ha!).
The ERs are stuffed to the rafters with people getting services who will NEVER pay a bill. Hospitals have millions in bad debt every quarter.
For those who complain that we should have socialized health care…they don’t realize that we already have a form of it. And it is bankrupting our hospitals.
Community hospitals will literally shutter their doors if we do not get this under control. I am all for cutting out Medicaid funding…but there is going to be a HUGE impact on small community hospitals for a few years while these changes are absorbed into the economy.
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