#medical-debt

#medical-debt

In season two of "The Pitt," the Emmy-winning drama that returned to HBO Max on Thursday, a middle-aged man named Orlando Diaz wakes up in the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center. His wife and daughter are at his side; a cannula is delivering oxygen into his nose. "How'd I get here?" he asks softly.

She and her wife had a blended family of five kids that cost a lot to keep healthy. As a result, years ago, the couple had asked PrairieStar if they could set up an ongoing payment plan to automatically take money from their checking accounts multiple times a month. Voss-Barnes would later state in a court filing that PrairieStar never informed her those payments were not enough to cover her bills and keep her out of collections.

Sarah Monroe once had a relatively comfortable middle-class life. She and her family lived in a neatly landscaped neighborhood near Cleveland. They had a six-figure income and health insurance through her job. Then, four years ago, when Monroe was pregnant with twin girls, something started to feel off. "I kept having to come into the emergency room for fainting and other symptoms," recalled Monroe, 43, who works for an insurance company.

The word "can't" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. The ability to afford something is often a choice. I can afford a $50 hamburger, in the sense that I could spend $50 on lunch without triggering financial catastrophe. But I refuse to pay $50 for a hamburger because it's much more than I think a burger is worth.

"This really was about all of us coming together and (doing) some good out in our community to live out our lives of faith in a different way than we had before,"

"Hospital closures over the past 20 years and physician shortages undermine assumptions about timely emergency care in the United States. Cuts to Medicaid put the entire emergency-medicine safety net at risk."

Judge Sean Jordan's ruling upheld the inclusion of medical debt on credit reports, thereby reversing a bipartisan effort to alleviate financial pressure from healthcare costs, affecting one-third of Americans.

"Right now, I live totally on what I receive from disability. I wouldn't consider myself financially stable."

The Debt Gala is a protest, a love letter, a fundraiser and a fashion show. 'Eat the rich,' but make it formalwear.