Three years ago, Congress passed the draconian bankruptcy bill. This cold-blooded legislation made a mockery out of the basic idea of the bankruptcy statute. It cancels Chapter 7 (clean slate) filing for people with incomes above the median income of their state. If these people have many medical bills , they are forced into the unforgiving Chapter 13, which requires repayment, regardless of debt situation.
Private student loans were added into the category of not-bankruptcy eligible. Also added was the credit counseling requirement. Anyone seeking protection is now required to enter counseling.
As a San Francisco Chronicle editorial noted, "Congress could have addressed myriad schemes used by the wealthy to shield their assets from creditors. It could have taken on some of the highly profitable but ethically suspect lending practices (predatory mortgage loans to the elderly, high-interest credit cards to college students, payday loans to the working poor) that too often send the recipient into a downward spiral of debt. Instead, the bill focused on an easy target - low income folks who find themselves in dire straits."
In a scathing report in Newsweek (April 25, 2005), Jonathan Alter charged that the bill was "literally written by the credit-card industry." And a New York times report by Stephen Labaton (March 9, 2005) noted that critics said "the measure was a thinly disguised gift to banks and credit-card companies, which, they contend are largely responsible for the high rate of bankruptcies, because they heavily promote credit cards and loansthat often come with large and largely unseen fees for late payments.
So now, these paid-off traitors (according to Washington Post reporter Kathleen Day, $90 million was paid to Congressmen to pass the bankruptcy bill, 2004-2006) authorize $700 Billion to bail out banking & finance companies, but for the common man and his financial troubles, there's the bankruptcy bill equivalent to a stab in the back.
Congress should be contacted to restore Chapter 7 protection to anyone, not just those under their state's median income. They should be told to regulate credit-card companies more stringently, and to repeal the stupid credit counseling requirement. They should also be told to enact an opposite to the 2005 bankruptcy law, which would be a bailout for (tax rebates) to lower income people. If they can do it for the likes of Capital One, Citicorp, Ford Motor Credit, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddy mac, et al,they can do it for all of us. Whom are they representing ?
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Comments: 5
Chapter 13 is a restructuring of debt that allows a person to get out from under the abusive late feels, slow down or stop the high and punitive interest and the person can not get any more credit until all the bills are paid. That is the right thing.
I AM terribly against the credit card companies being able to charge such high fees for being a few hours late and even up to a couple weeks late. I believe that it is WRONG for companies to have the right to check our credit bureau scores and raise our interest rates because we have one late payment or in my own case, I accidentally went over my limit by 15 dollars on one of my cards.
But why should people get a free pass to go out and get back into debt again and even file another bankruptcy later?
I am 50,000 dollars in debt for the 2nd time in my life. My husband and I paid off the first 50,000 worth of debt. And we are not wealthy people. We made a series of choices and moved around the country for good jobs that gave us sign on bonuses. Sadly, I got back into debt when I needed 7,000 for dental work and more money when my husband was laid off work. Then we moved, I started my business all over, tried some small side businesses and before I knew it I was in debt again. But I PAY my bills! I work 7 days per week. I do what I have to. No one held a gun to my head. I could have chosen to have my teeth pulled and gotten dentures instead. There are always choices to be made.
What you're missing here is that the system is rigged to benefit the super-rich. It's for those who are afflicted with a mental abberation of unrestricted GREED. I'm trying to be polite, but I don't want to betray my true feelings either. I sense that they have got you well-programmed (but you're not alone).
As for the Medical industy, guess what they've been up to ? Ten years ago or so they decided they were tired of getting "only" 80% of their bills paid because that's all the insurance companies typically cover (and patients don't make enough money on their jobs
to cover the other 20%). So they raised their rates immensely. Result ? they now get their 100% from the 80% (because of the grossly inflated rates). But guess what ? They're still not satisfied. They still send out the bill for that other 20%, don't they ? In a way, you could say they shouldn't even be sending out those bills. They are gouging, and have a lot of people buffaloed into thiking it's OK, and that they (the patients) are the guilty parties. I just thought of a name for it : Legal Scammery.
Let's remember one more thing. People don't request to have surgeries like buying a
big screen TV. It's do or die.
Greed is a human problem no matter who we are. You don't think it's greedy to just walk away from owing thousands of dollars? And what about people that really know they plan to go bankrupt so they run their cards up to the limit and then they sell a lot of the crap they bought on Ebay, spend the money and then go bankrupt. These companies don't just write off these losses. They pass the buck to the rest of us that are paying our bills. We are gouged with late penalties and higher interest rates to pay for those that will not pay their bills in the end.
I'm not happy about the 700 Billion bail out. But people are basically pretty stupid. Business owners of all size will lay people off of work even before they start to feel the pinch just because of rumors about sluggish economy. Then because of the lay offs and rumors of a weak Christmas people start shoving money under their mattress instead of spending it. Pretty soon we have this snow ball effect taking on and we are into a full blown depression. What people should do is be thankful when they are making their payments and spend all they can in order to keep the economy going. Business owners should be happy with paying their bills and putting their profits back into their businesses, their employees and our futures instead of looking to garner larger and larger personal nest eggs for themselves on the backs of others.
I do believe that greed is alive and well but it's at all levels. A lot of the medical bills that go unpaid are for things that can be avoided just like buying TVs.. People don't have to eat themselves into all the diseases that come from being overweight and people don't have to smoke themselves into asthma, bronchitis and cancer. And before you accuse me of nut understanding the plight of the obese, I am obese. It's my fault and I will pay my medical bills as I also struggle to lose it to no avail. And lets not forget all the unpaid bills for giving birth by people that need to use a better form of birth control because they can't afford the kids they have. Again...I understand. I have 4 children. But I work 7 days per week and feed my own. Oh yeah, and let's not forget the drain on society that our ignored retired adults put on us when they go into expensive homes before their time. My mother lives with me and unless she gets Alzheimer's and I can't keep her safe anymore, she'll stay with me til she's gone.
I think we need to move back toward a time where more of our society is productive and takes pride in their work ethic and we should do everything possible to make bankruptcy only about reorganizing and paying off debts that really do belong to us.
BUT, there's so much more even that is a problem. My stepfather was a serious drain on society. He was bi-polar, didn't work, didn't take any meds because he couldn't afford them and may not have taken them if he had them. So he would drink constantly, call ambulances and when he died my mother had tens of thousands of dollars worth of bills she could not pay. Eventually they stopped hounding her and now that it's been more then 7 years, she can get credit cards again and she'll never pay them off. I don't blame her because we tried and tried to get him help. But our society has decided to stop placing people in mental health institutions where they really belong. He would have been cheaper to manage if he had been under lock and key. We tried getting him help but that kind of help is increasingly harder to find these days. In the end, he did stab someone, she was a drug addict he picked up in a weekend detox center and she lived. She was as high as he was drunk. They were having an affair. But he was charged with attempted murder, let go on the street to end up in yet another emergency room. They let him go again and he died on the streets before he was to be arraigned on the attempted murder charge.
It's all a very sad waste. We need to find ways as a society to stop the bleeding. But walking a way with a clean slate isn't fair to those of us that work hard to stay on top of things.
Suzi
No, it's not greedy at all, in those cases where it is the greed of the credit card scammers, bank scammers, hospital & doctor scammers who have caused the bankruptcies to exist as much, or more so, than the bankruptcy filer.
People don't ask to get cancer, multiple sclerosis, etc. Some ailments are preventable by exercising good health habits, others are not. I'm referring to the situations where people didn't make their mess. It results from a series of traps laid for them by the credit -card industry, banks, insurance companies, hospitals, etc. In many ways people are victims of the system.
Work ethic ? How about PAY ETHIC ? How about miserly employers who underpay their employees miserably, in a negligent society thay allows a $6/hour minimum wage
(when it should be more than twice that). Isn't a person entitled to be able to make " a living" from giving up 40 hours/week of their time and energy ?
How about legislative ethic ? In Florida (and most states), we have mandatory PIP insurance requirement. This is the most expensive part of one's car insurance, and covers
medical care (80%) for you if you're hurt in a car accident . But if you already have medical insurance (80% coverage), who needs PIP ? Not you. You're already covered with your medical insurance (ex. I have Aetna). But you still, by law, have to pay the insurance company for that PIP. So who gets the benefit of this ? I've been told the hospitals need it because of the people who don't have their own insurance (like Aetna).
Well, great. So if the hospitals need it so bad then let THEM pay for it.
This is nothing but another scam perpetrated upon the American people by an unscrupulous alliance of legislators, governors, and the medical and insurance industries.
Sure there's freeloaders around, welfare cheats, foreign women who cross our border to give birth to anchor babies, and parasite on our treasuries. I imagine there's lots of examples of all those kind of things, but I'm only talking about what I'm talking about, which is the victimization of especially vulnerable people and the opportunizing of the credit-card companies, banks, insurance companies, medical industry, etc., as well as the
choice of legislators to represent business-for-payoffs, rather than the people they're supposed to be representing.
Incidentally, the Republicans aren't the only ones who did the bidding of the special interest funders. 19 Democrats also voted for the bill in response to payoffs ranging from
$ 5,950 (Daniel Inouye, Hawaii) to $298,018 (Tom Carper, Delaware) (www.opensecrets.org).
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