‘Your Money or Your Life’: This Doctor Wrote the Book on Medical Debt
In 2019, emergency medicine physician and historian Luke Messac was working as a medical resident. He had heard about hospitals suing their own patients over unpaid medical bills, so he decided to investigate whether the hospitals where he worked were doing the same.
It turns out they were.
“The care I was delivering to patients was resulting in them showing up in court, or having their wages garnished, or signing up for a payment plan that they would be paying for the better part of a decade,” said Messac.
In this episode of “An Arm and a Leg,” host Dan Weissmann speaks with Messac about his book, “Your Money or Your Life: Debt Collection in American Medicine,” and how people working in health care can try to reform these practices.
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