Credit card debt collection

From the article:

> What can be done about this?

> Many people have suggestions for obvious improvements here, which might rhyme with the Federal Trade Commission’s suggestions from 2010 or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s spate of rulemaking from 2021 through 2023 or the FDCPA from 1978.

I would humbly suggest looking at how different countries deal with the same issues, and seeing what works and what doesn't work. Many of the differences will be cultural, some will be differences in laws and regulations. Some will be systematic differences, some will be down to random chance.

The second bill is from the chef. You thought the chef worked for the restaurant? No, that was a separately contracted service provider.

I'll provide an example...while heavily medicated after breaking both of my legs I signed something on an Ipad, once. I asked for a copy and they weren't able to provide me one. After more than a dozen phone calls I was finally able to get a copy. But that involved figuring out whether it was the company that rented me the wheelchair, the company that billed me, the company that billed my insurance, or the company that owned all of those companies. They provided me three documents I had signed with not the same signature on them. Then when I asked them to pickup the 'rental' that they never told me was a rental, it took five phone calls and over two weeks (during which time they billed me and my insurance for another month of renal). They finally came and picked it up within three hours when I had the news reporter who covered my accident get in touch with the CEO's office.

I reported all this, with call recordings, logs, notes, etc. to my insurance's fraud hotline and they closed the file without doing anything.

Much of health care in the US is wrapped in a blanket of outright fraud. You can't agree to be a victim of fraud. Until I get to charge them for the time I spend correcting their billing mistakes I am totally fine deciding what bill is appropriate and what bill is not on my own.

Technical debt.

Once systems acquire sufficient technical debt, it's packaged up into maintenance contracts and sold to offshore development companies to support.

Let me describe the situation the other person is talking about, with two examples that happened to me in the past year.

1. I scheduled a colonoscopy with a hospital. They charged me $300 for the procedure, which I paid up front. Everything went smoothly and there were no delays, complications, or followups. A week later they sent me a bill for over $1k. They had not applied my $300 payment towards the total. They had not waited for insurance to reimburse them. They simply decided they could arbitrarily charge me more, and they did. Fortunately, my wife is somewhat familiar with medical billing and we did not pay. Insurance reimbursed them, then we called them and told them to apply the $300 we had already paid, at which point we owed nothing. If we had paid the $1k+ bill, I am sure we would not have been reimbursed.

2. I went to a clinic for a minor sports injury. They charged me a $60 consultation fee which I paid up front; I then spoke to the doctor for 15 minutes and got a prescription. A week later, I got a bill demanding an additional $180, and in that bill they claimed they had already been paid by my insurance. I checked with my insurance provider and found they had not even filed the claim yet. I ignored the bill, insurance reimbursed them, and they have not contacted me since.

Your characterization is ignorant of how scummy medical billing actually is.