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Inside the Dark, Lucrative World of Consumer Debt Collection

nytimes.com

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Re: Inside the Dark, Lucrative World of Consumer Debt Collection

#151

Post by refurb »

forca wrote: post #63
ams6110 wrote: post #26

I was called by a collector once. Old medical bill, the clinic had sent it to an old address and the mail forwarding had expired. Why they never called or tracked me down I don't know, but they eventually sold it to a collector who had no trouble finding my phone number. When they called I was confused at first, then remembered and realized it was legit, paid it, end of story. They were utterly professional and court…

Medical debt rankles me like nothing else. The US, supposedly the most advanced nation on Earth has the worst notion of all: health care for profit. Simply evil. Health care is a basic human right. Full stop. Health care should never be based on one's ability to pay. Never. I pray I see socialised medicine in the US in my lifetime. If Hilary Clinton gets elected, the push for this will be stronger than the thin edge…

Evil! The hyperbole is overflowing!

It is true that socialized medicine puts an end to the financial hardship imposed on individuals, but it also brings other problems into the picture, namely rationed healthcare. I've experienced it myself. That's why you have so many Canadians coming to the US when they get really sick.

Re: Inside the Dark, Lucrative World of Consumer Debt Collection

#152

Post by refurb »

forca wrote: post #105
prostoalex wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, there are more not-for-profit hospitals than there are for-profit hospitals, which doesn't dramatically change the pricing equation. http://www.aha.org/research/rc/stat-studies/fast-facts.shtml One man's profit is another man's stash for bonuses and building a new wing of the hospital.

The goal is zero profit in health care.

Ridiculous, profit is what drives innovation. You think the billions of dollars a year that go into healthcare R&D comes from the goodness of people's hearts?

Re: Inside the Dark, Lucrative World of Consumer Debt Collection

#153

Post by sanderjd »

kazinator wrote: post #95
blhack wrote: post #34

This is one of the most unbelievable articles I've ever read. If you didn't read it all the way through, do so over lunch or something; it's amazing. The idea of "millions of dollars" worth of debt being traded for around on thumb drives, and that all those thumb drives really contain are excel spreadsheets is mind boggling . Those people in those spreadsheets are real people , and they're being completely duhumanize…

You are totally right! +1. The article had me at "stolen". If you owe a bit of money, some of the dipshits that call you may actually have misappropriated the collection account and are not connected to the original debtor in any way, who did not receive and will not receive a red cent. This passing of the buck helps to explain why numerous agencies may be involved: people get calls from various toms, dicks and harry…

This reminds me a lot of when the department of education sold my student loans to a couple private firms. Out of the blue, I just received a couple emails from a couple companies I've never heard of asking me to give them all my information (including my SSN) in order to create an account. I deleted them immediately, assuming there was a new phishing scheme in vogue, and didn't realize what had happened until I checked my accounts a few months later and realized they had been paid off, with no information about who did the paying off. I couldn't even find one of the emails afterward to figure out who actually owned the debt, and had to call someone at DOE loan servicing to figure it out. I was flabbergasted.

Re: Inside the Dark, Lucrative World of Consumer Debt Collection

#154

Post by dllthomas »

patio11 wrote: post #147

This is actually something I think a startup could do a really good job at disrupting, but you'd have to have a very high tolerance for both a) schleps and b) dealing with poor peoples' problems. Billions of dollars are being thrown around at companies where the average level of technical sophistication is Excel spreadsheets and the prototypical competitor is a high-school graduate with an average of N weeks of exper…

I wonder if you could tie it to disrupting credit reporting.

Re: Inside the Dark, Lucrative World of Consumer Debt Collection

#155

Post by jjoonathan »

selectodude wrote: post #139
xyzzyz wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A 10% rise in taxes? That's a heck of a lot of money. The majority of the rich won't buy into it, they'll fight it tooth and nail. But now they pay insurance anyway, aren't they?. With a single-payer system, their contribution would actually probably fall.

Right now, if high net worth individuals pay insurance at all (it's usually an employer provided benefit), it's pre-tax and even the best cadillac plans for the entire family are ~2k/mo. A 10 percent increase in income tax would rankle anybody making over ~150k/yr, and that's assuming the best whole family plans. Someone like myself who pays under 400/mo for really good insurance would get dinged on a 10 percent tax…

The average person in the US is already paying ~200% as much as a citizen of your typical single-payer country for coverage. Not only are we paying twice as much for coverage, we don't even have universal coverage after paying twice as much.

http://healthcarereform.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourc...

Re: Inside the Dark, Lucrative World of Consumer Debt Collection

#157

Post by dragonwriter »

fred_durst wrote: post #69
Iftheshoefits wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to the credit issues the other commenters noted, there is the issue of taxes in the case of "chargeoffs." One will get an income statement from the credit issuer for the fraction of the debt they write off. Odds are if one is in the position of having debt collectors come after them they'll be unlikely to afford the taxes on the "income."

Exactly. Buying your debt off for a penny on the dollar is probably the stupidest thing you could do financially. You would be trading $10,000 in credit card debt, with a fair amount of legal protections, for $4,000 in IRS debt with very few legal protections.

> You would be trading $10,000 in credit card debt, with a fair amount of legal protections, for $4,000 in IRS debt with very few legal protections.

Forgiven debt is taxed as normal income, so you'd have to have a 40% marginal federal income tax rate to end up with $4,000 in IRS debt on $10,000 of forgiven consumer debt, which is an approximation of the maximum marginal rate being 39.6% (which kicks in at $400K income for a single taxpayer.)

I would hazard to guess that people that would be paying anywhere close to a 40% marginal federal tax rate aren't really sweating $10K credit card balances.

Re: Inside the Dark, Lucrative World of Consumer Debt Collection

#158

Post by sanderjd »

derefr wrote: post #118
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd have to first define what constitutes "ethical" as distinct from "legal". If you're of the opinion that the very practice of collecting debt is scummy or unethical, then no. Assuming you will allow for at least SOME form of "ethical" debt collection, we'd have to narrow down what kinds. For instance, just off the top of my head, you've got: - Commercial Debt - Medical Debt - Student Loans - Bad Checks Within th…

> As someone who was still in college myself only a few years ago, the idea of the financial burden imposed on me for the rest of my life simply for doing the thing that society practically strong-armed me into doing seems, to me, ridiculous; for that reason I am hesitant to call any form of Student Debt collection "ethical" simply because the laws which govern it are atrocious. What happens when you don't pay your S…

I may be wrong, but my understanding is that (at least for the student loans I have), the owner of the debt is allowed to garnish my wages (and I have heard even social security payouts) after some amount of time in default. So I think your plan would only work for people who are willing to be unemployed indefinitely.

Re: Inside the Dark, Lucrative World of Consumer Debt Collection

#159

Post by cnp »

UrMomReadsHN wrote: post #150
vinceguidry wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not so idiotic. I ran up a modest amount of debt in my early twenties, never paid any of it. Fast forward ten years. Found a decent job, look to buy a car, come to find out my credit report is mostly empty. Most everything had dropped off. Capital One gave me a credit card, I've been building up credit and savings over the last year. If you have the discipline to say, "no new debt," which isn't that hard to do after…

Its hard to impossible to rent an apartment around here with a low credit score. That wasn't the case several years ago. I am guessing it will just keep getting more prevalent so you may have to live in your parents garage util 30 while waiting for that old debt to drop off your credit report.

I'm moving to SF in a year or so because my wife is attending grad school and I am terrified about housing due to this fact. Maybe I can get my employer to sign the lease.... right

Re: Inside the Dark, Lucrative World of Consumer Debt Collection

#160

Post by [deleted] »

xyzzyz wrote: post #133
bequanna wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but I think there is too much at stake for too many high net-worth individuals and corporations for the US to make a change to the single-payer system. A 10% rise in taxes? That's a heck of a lot of money. The majority of the rich won't buy into it, they'll fight it tooth and nail. In my opinion, I think it depends on how well appeals for/against a single-payer system resonate with the middle class. Do they…

>A 10% rise in taxes? That's a heck of a lot of money. The majority of the rich won't buy into it, they'll fight it tooth and nail. But now they pay insurance anyway, aren't they?. With a single-payer system, their contribution would actually probably fall.

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