Thread by @doctorow

Last Jan, @NorthwellHealth was the subject of a viral @nytimes story about the thousands of patients it had sued over medical debt, in the midst of a pandemic. The publicity was so bad that the company abandoned its legal campaign of terror.

nytimes.com/2021/01/05/nyr…

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But not every bloated, financialized hospital chain got the message. The massive chain Community Health Systems has long been addicted to suing the shit out of its patients, and the pandemic didn't change that.

edition.cnn.com/2021/05/17/us/…

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CHS's financial crimes are investigated in a must-read @CNN story by @caseytolan. While the company insists that it doesn't sue poor patients over their medical debts, Tolan debunks this claim, revealing the cruel and ugly lengths CHS has gone to during the pandemic.

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CHS is a kind of poster child for the idiocy of finacializing the health care system. For years, its corporate owners have pursued profit though endless, disastrous mergers that have left it saddled with debt and resulted in the closure of many community hospitals.

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Every year, CHS lost money...until 2020. That's the year that fed and state governments gave it $705m in pandemic-related aid and millions more in forgiven loans.

CHS turned its first profit - $511m - last year.

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But much of that money was spoken for in advance, because its top execs took home multimillion-dollar "performance bonuses" for having the genius strategy of getting a gigantic bailout for their stupid, bungling, unweildy chimera of a hospital chain.

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Small wonder, then, that CHS - already notorious as one of the country's worst medical debt chasers - stepped up its collection lawsuits against sick, unemployed and terrified people.

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Despite the company's policy of not suing people who lost their jobs during the pandemic, nor those earning less than 200% of the national poverty line, CHS did just that, repeatedly - and then blamed its victims for not filing the right paperwork.

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But again, the record is replete with CHS customers who mailed letters and made phone calls begging the hospital not to sue. CHS filed at least 24,000 lawsuits in 2020. Experts call CHS "among the most litigious" of all US hospital chains.

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CNN spoke to many of CHS's victims, like, Richard Piper, who earns $525/week and supports two daughters and several grandchildren. He was ordered to pay CHS $34,894 in medical debt, as well as $3500 in legal fees to CHS's lawyers.

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CHS sued an unnamed Oklahoma woman who, laid off, begged them to stop trying to collect the $781 she owed because if she paid it, she would end up homeless. CHS prevailed, and the court nearly doubled that debt by tacking on court and legal fees.

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CHS sued Jennifer Alegria - a single mom with two daughters who works as a chef - to recover $146000 from her double mastectomy. Alegria earns less than $40k/year.

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When CHS wins its lawsuits, it typically moves swiftly to place liens on its victims' homes and garnish their wages. Those wages are typically sub-poverty to begin with: the most common employer for a CHS victim is...Walmart.

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When CHS trumpeted its profitable year to shareholders, it also warned that it expected to lose some of its debt-collection revenue, thanks to "a deterioration in the collectability of patient accounts…as the result of adverse economic conditions arising from the pandemic."

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CHS warned shareholders about "a deterioration in collectibility" because debt is central to its strategy.

For example, after acquiring St Petersburg, FL's oldest hospital, Bayfront, it realized it had made a mistake and quickly sold the hospital off.

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But CHS retained Bayfront's DEBTS, and continues to sue patients who owe money for treatment in a hospital it no longer owns.

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CHS bought and then shuttered Shands Lake Shore Regional Medical Center, the only hospital in Lake City, FL. Though the hospital is long gone, its doctors and nurses fired, CHS continues to employ its debt-collection department, which sued 86 patients during the pandemic.

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CHS's long run of idiotic mergers has left it with $7.6b in debt. In business terms, this is a company in a persistent vegetative state with no hope of recovery. The cruel and extraordinary measures it has pursued to stave off death - suing patients - are doomed.

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Suing over debts as small as $201 (!) will not save this dying business. What's more, CHS's indiscriminate legal harassment is creating more liabilities: when CHS patients can afford to hire lawyers to represent them, they "win their cases fairly easily."

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CHS's debt collection depends on attacking people who can't afford to defend themselves, in other words.

Take Jeffery Turgeon, who owes CHS $20,784, who petitioned the company for mercy with a handwritten letter on notebook paper.

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He now owes the full amount, plus $180 in court costs. He's paying $100/month. It would take 17 years to pay the debt at that rate - but thanks to the 8% interest, the payments will stretch on for years after that.

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Turgeon's fiancee Jennifer Matheson lost her hospice job during the pandemic. They can no longer afford even such small pleasures as taking their children to McDonald's.

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CHS was once the largest hospital chain in America. It's still in the top ten. It has bought and destroyed hospitals across the country, paid millions to its executives, and sued the shit out of its patients.

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Tell me again about how the private sector does a great job running the health-care system?

eof/

ETA - If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2021/05/18/unh…