Avoiding Wage Garnishment for Piling Medical Bills
According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, millions of Americans have medical collections listed on their credit reports each year. This is because, unfortunately, many people find it difficult to pay their medical bills. To make matters worse, nonprofit hospitals attempt to garnish the wages of those who cannot pay – a drastic action that extends beyond simply reporting the owed bills to the credit bureaus and involves going to court.
This practice is widely used in a few states throughout the United States. Missouri is home to a hospital that has sued more patients than any other. However, that nonprofit hospital was also found to own a for-profit collection agency, which has filed thousands of lawsuits against patients of the hospital. Not surprisingly, many of those patients had low incomes, making wage garnishment devastating.
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