RE: Daily Dose of Sultnpapper 08/19/18> Following up on the “Courtesy letter “ the oldest boy got.
Part of the problem with your son's issue may lie with the 'doctors group'. The possibility exists that they may have had a tax issue (making too much money IS an issue for some) and just didn't bill. Once they 'sell' the account to the credit service they can write it off as bad debt which comes directly out of income earned.
The money paid them by the 'credit service' IS NOT direct income and thus is taxed at a different rate. The attorney gets his cut from the 'credit service' and the percentage is high enough that he simply sends a form letter to every single one.
Now for the really fun part. I will just guarantee you that before this is settled out the credit service will sell the bill to another credit service and can claim that they have nothing to do with the bill at all. The new credit service starts the process all over again. Rinse and repeat.
Good catch on the power of attorney for your kids. What an absolute bucket of poop. I mean really. When I lost my eye (I was 20 and a college student-sorta) there was some discussion with my parents about whether or not the insurance would cover. I was technically in the Navy (I'd raised my hand and sworn the oath-twice) so they were sort of involved, too.
The end was that the Insurance Company paid. They said it was out of the goodness of their hearts but I suspect they were in a box. The point is, I just about wasn't involved in any of this. In my day, the party that paid the bills was who made the decisions. No further questions needed.
How'd we get here? We let the lawyers run the country with input from the medical community. We let the medical community run the medical industry with input from the lawyers. See the common thread? I could go on but I think there is no need.
Good Sunday to you my friend. Thanks for the update and for the attention to a vast problem.
You Tom have brought up an angle that I never considered, the tax liabilities of the people involved. It might be very well as you suggested where the doctors group is just making too much money,
I need to look at a way to put into his reply a way that if they sell this "account" to some other collection service that he can some how go back on them for any expenses incurred or at least he can than start sending them bills for his time to deal with it.
This kind of stuff is time consuming and what people need to realize is that when you get one of these letters from a debt collector that if you don't respond and dispute it within the 30 day time frame you are agreeing that you owe the debt.
This needs to be done when you get the very first letter, otherwise if you just disregard it, they will end up taking it to court and getting a default judgement against you.
In the end it might just be easier to pay the damn the thing but it is a matter of principle.
If he were to pay it and he was getting scammed it would just encourage these type of people to continue scamming people. On the other hand if it is a legitimate debt and he does owe it this might make this outfit get their ducks in row and start operating like businesses should.
If this isn't legit it would surely be a federal offense of mail fraud that the government might need to be made aware of. Only time will tell, and we just have to see how it all plays out.
The insurance and kids and power of attorney is something that everyone also does need to be aware of, what a mess that arena has become. Pretty much because as you noted with the players in that game too.