RIP Medical Debt | Hacker News Reader

RIP Medical Debt

ripmedicaldebt.org

38 pointsvincent_s17 comments

I love the intent but doesn’t this make the problem worse? Your dollars are essentially rewarding a system that created the debt in the first place.

Not for the people whose medical debt is eliminated

Reminds me of https://www.thestarfishchange.org/starfish-tale

We all have to wait for the US to solve its systemic healthcare problem - but we can make a difference in someone’s life now

The same argument is made against helping homelessness, right? Providing overnight shelters makes being homeless less miserable but doesn't really solve the root problem.

Close, but I’m not advocating against helping, just commenting on this particular approach. Also in your example, homeless needing shelter are currently at risk of environmental exposure whereas in this stage of medical debt, the damage has already been done (debt is discounted due to time elapsed since its initial sale). Buying medical debt offers relief by way of positive disposition but also rewards someone who bought and sold that debt along the way. If you’re voting your dollars to a system that profits off misfortune, you are encouraging that system to exist.

Jubilee. We’ve never quite managed it, but we keep trying.

John Oliver bought millions of dollars of debt for, like, $60k. I can't afford to get into that game yet but I think I will in the coming years. How can I do that?

Why not via this website?

Maybe buy up the debt and throw it on the blockchain as the basis of a stablecoin?

Sell sub-prime medical debt, on sub-prime blockchain, run by sub-prime financial experts, to unqualified investors... And finance it all with VC money? Sounds fucking genius to me, my good dude.

Business Plan

Step 1: Buy medical debt, starting with the highest risk debts.

Step 2: Move debt to blockchain.

Step 3: Yell, "it's ponzin time."

Step 4: Wait for technological or social exploit to render coin worthless.

Step 5: Enjoy the destruction of medical debt.

Step 6: Rinse repeat with other forms of debt.

The worst idea I’ve ever seen on HackerNews

why? so you can collect the debt yourself? That's not the point. The point is to forgive the debt. If you want to be a debt collector go be a debt collector, no blockchain required.

But everything is better with blockchain.

As blockchain ideas go it is better than most I’ve heard. People get their magical electronic coins they can use as status symbols (or virtue signaling) and other people get their debt paid off. Mining new coins is a social good. Win, win and win.

When the whole house of cards comes crashing down nobody loses anything since the coins have no real value other than the “feels”.

I was mostly just trolling originally but I’m starting to like this idea.

Nobody cares about you holding these coins that were used as part of a debt forgiveness scheme, and it is not worth the carbon emissions to maintain these coins on a blockchain. Just forgive the debt.

That says a lot about blockchain ideas

Isn't that just shifting the debt from one place to another?

Not really - they’re buying debt just like a debt collector does, but don’t collect on it - just forgives it outright.

Why burn coal to keep the records of this on a blockchain if you are going to forgive it. It is stupid.

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