The World of Bright Futures

@all-the-blue-changes / all-the-blue-changes.tumblr.com

Matt, 26 (queer, enby, polyam, he/they) "High into the Brightest Blue"
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While the giant bill was fake, it represented a very real accomplishment. The group raised more than $17,000, which purchased more than $1.6 million in medical debt owed by Philadelphians, according to their nonprofit partner RIP Medical Debt.

This is a great way to undermine the system that we are trapped in

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uniquecrash5

The fact that this can be done at all shows how utterly bullshit the entire system is. There was literally no reason for that medical debt to exist in the first place.

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Let's say you owe a private hospital ten thousand dollars, but you have very few assets, so they're pretty sure they're never getting any of that back. There's ninety nine other people who also each owe the hospital ten thousand dollars. (It doesn't have to be a hospital; any debt can be sold this way.) The hospital has shit to do and the low chances of you paying them mean it's an unnecessary drain on their time and resources to hound you all for it. But they can get *some* money, by selling your debt to a third party.

Let's say the sell each ten thousand dollar debt for ten dollars (I'm making all these numbers up for simplicity). So a third party gives the hospital one thousand dollars, and now all hundred of you owe that third party ten thousand instead! You're in the clear with the hospital, you owe it to these guys now! And their job is to hound and harrass you for the money you owe. If one of you pays up more than a thousand dollars, you've covered their initial investment. These guys are gambling on the likelihood that enough of you can pay your debts that you make it worth the time they spend tracking you and harrassing you.

Or, instead of trying to get the money out of you, they can just... decide you don't owe them. Why not? They own the debt. They can fork out a thousand bucks, buy a million in debt, and forgive it. That's what these guys did. (This is also a favourite move of John Oliver; if you ever see headlines about John Oliver forgiving debt, this is what he's doing). A small payment can take a massive weight off the shoulders of a lot of struggling people.

Again, I made up the numbers to simplify the math. But this is how the process works.

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turbozarky

seventeen thousand dollars to buy SIXTEEN MILLION DOLLARS OF DEBT. Absolutely FUCKED at how cheap our misery and servitude is.

thing is, the debt companies *hate* this, because it means that it gives hope to people saddled with unimaginable debt that someone will come along and buy that debt and cancel it. So more people don't pay their debts, and they lose money. Debt buying companies do their *damnedest* to keep people like these philadelphhians and john oliver from doing exactly this.

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complete

you can do this too! Follow OP's link to https://ripmedicaldebt.org/ and donate whatever you can. For every $1 you donate, they buy $100 of debt and cancel it. I donate $10 each month just to get that amazing email that says I've been personally responsible for cancelling $1000 of medical debt - it's genuinely the best $10 I spend each month 😊

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i-say-ok

ok!

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pointnclick

i couldn't even appreciate the artistry behind the clothing designs this year at the met gala because my bitterness and anger toward the exorbitantly wealthy has grown too much to be contained i try to say ooo pretty gown but all the black hateful bile starts oozing out from under the lid of its container. 7 months of genocide and the largest homeless camps my city has ever seen and food banks in the universities and baby formula locked behind glass and stomach gnawing guilt over a $7 latte and rent is always late and always behind on electricity bills uh ohhhh summer is here time for another wild fire. oooo pretty gown. the next met gala theme will be bear spray and what happens is i bear spray inside the gallery. i can't even force a sort of healthy detachment anymore like "haha oh well i guess that movie actor is rich it's not like they're an ultra wealthy bazillionaire oooo pretty gown" they're all worms to me vile beasts i look at them in their isolated imagine john lennon covid song bubble and i feeeeeel the milk of human kindness curdling within me. how can you smile at the camera. we are all dying girl. isn't there a protest not even a block away from you guys? protesters and riot cops and homeless ppl in the streets. i guess that's unfair you guys deserve a night of glitz and glamour and getting away from it all as if you're not constantly away from it all. girl we are dying. sick sick world. sick dying world. anyway i didn't watch the met gala this year

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gumuhit

you’re going to love again, find a job again, create art again, do what you love again, feel powerful again. you’re going to be back on track. i don’t know when, but you are going to feel like yourself again, eventually. this isn’t the end. hang in there.

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