<story><title>The People&apos;s Bailout</title><url>http://howtosharpenpencils.tumblr.com/post/35285338188/the-peoples-bailout</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>marknutter</author><text>This may sound harsh, but medical attention isn&apos;t free, and crossing that street without medical insurance and getting hit by a car and accepting expensive treatment you can&apos;t pay for is still incurring debt which you are obligated to pay back. This is why insurance of all forms exists; to protect us from expensive, catastrophic events. So as far as fault goes, you are very much to blame if you take risks and choose not to pay for insurance, regardless how expensive it is.</text></item><item><author>narcissus</author><text>&quot;Debt isn&apos;t some random accident like getting hit by a car while crossing the street.&quot;&lt;p&gt;Except debt can be exactly due to some random accident like getting hit by a car while crossing the street and you don&apos;t have the insurance to pay for the medical bills.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m not saying that this is true for all of the OWS debts: probably not even the majority. I&apos;m just saying that it&apos;s not as easy as &quot;it&apos;s your fault you&apos;re in debt&quot;.</text></item><item><author>marknutter</author><text>How does OWS think this debt accumulated? Debt isn&apos;t some random accident like getting hit by a car while crossing the street. You have to get yourself into debt. It used to be taboo, but it&apos;s acceptable to get into debt these days and worse yet, walk away from it. OWS, to me, represents an entitled generation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>esrauch</author><text>It is totally false to assume that anyone with debt from medical bills must be uninsured.&lt;p&gt;I had an appendectomy when I was in college and I had insurance and I still received a bill for something like $8000 &lt;i&gt;after&lt;/i&gt; the insurance paid out. I managed to have half of that removed due to my very low income, and I luckily was able to pay the rest of it, but this was literally the simplest possible ER visit and surgery you can have and I was lucky to have savings to cover it. If anything worse had happened to me (say, if I got hit by a car) then I could easily have ended up with more than $10k in debt &lt;i&gt;after&lt;/i&gt; insurance and &lt;i&gt;after&lt;/i&gt; the follow up negotiations with the hospital.&lt;p&gt;Some insurance would certainly have covered this better, but I had the more expensive of the 2 choices insurance plans that were offered to students at my school. Anyone who is buying their own insurance if it&apos;s not provided by their employer isn&apos;t going to do much better.</text></comment>
<story><title>The People&apos;s Bailout</title><url>http://howtosharpenpencils.tumblr.com/post/35285338188/the-peoples-bailout</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>marknutter</author><text>This may sound harsh, but medical attention isn&apos;t free, and crossing that street without medical insurance and getting hit by a car and accepting expensive treatment you can&apos;t pay for is still incurring debt which you are obligated to pay back. This is why insurance of all forms exists; to protect us from expensive, catastrophic events. So as far as fault goes, you are very much to blame if you take risks and choose not to pay for insurance, regardless how expensive it is.</text></item><item><author>narcissus</author><text>&quot;Debt isn&apos;t some random accident like getting hit by a car while crossing the street.&quot;&lt;p&gt;Except debt can be exactly due to some random accident like getting hit by a car while crossing the street and you don&apos;t have the insurance to pay for the medical bills.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m not saying that this is true for all of the OWS debts: probably not even the majority. I&apos;m just saying that it&apos;s not as easy as &quot;it&apos;s your fault you&apos;re in debt&quot;.</text></item><item><author>marknutter</author><text>How does OWS think this debt accumulated? Debt isn&apos;t some random accident like getting hit by a car while crossing the street. You have to get yourself into debt. It used to be taboo, but it&apos;s acceptable to get into debt these days and worse yet, walk away from it. OWS, to me, represents an entitled generation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>subsection1h</author><text>&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    you are very much to blame if you take risks and choose
    not to pay for insurance, regardless how expensive it is.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
I think I understand where you&apos;re coming from. You must live in a society in which no one has ever been denied health insurance due to pre-existing conditions. If I lived in such a society, I might agree with you.</text></comment>