• Drusas@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      My credit was destroyed while I was still in college and hadn’t yet built up basically any credit. My crime for having my financial future ruined for the next 7 years? I was hit by someone who turned their SUV into me because they didn’t look whether there was anyone in the crosswalk, and I was a broke college student, so I couldn’t pay for all of the medical bills.

      (Tangential note: I don’t like the phrase “hit by a car”. Until cars are fully autonomous, no one ever gets hit by a car; they get hit by a person driving a car. Also, fuck that lady and her trying to get out of the $67 ticket she got for hitting me and permanently injuring my knee. “I didn’t see anybody” isn’t an excuse. Especially when that person was wearing orange. If you do that, you just didn’t look.)

      Edit: Also, the US credit system is a scam designed to benefit the well off and punish those who are poorer.

      • Duder167@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Confused. How did she not pay for it if she caused it? Is this just a major fuck up on your part for not holding her to account? I’ve never been in a wreck but my car has been hit in parking lots and I’ve never paid a dime, always the person at fault.

        • Boddhisatva@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Not who you are responding to, but it happens all the time. Idiot driver is uninsured so there’s no insurance to pay the bills. Or they are under-insured and their insurance will only pay a fraction of the bills. What are you going to do? If you can afford it, you can sue them and maybe get some money out of them, but unless they are rich the odds are you won’t get enough wealth to pay the bills either. And if they are rich, they’ll tie you up in court for so long that your credit will be destroyed and you’ll run out of money to keep paying your lawyer to keep suing them.

          • diablexical@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            None of this would be an issue if the medical bills were covered by single payer. I learned in other countries there’s no “ambulance chasers” because there’s no reason to have them - a whole parasitic industry nonexistent.

    • svenrhapsody@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Don’t know when it was, but nowadays it’s generally best to just ignore medical bills like that vs bankruptcy.