Vinegar

joined 1 year ago
[–] Vinegar@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As everyone else has confirmed - the title is incorrect, medical debt absolutely can be sent to collections

What OP likely misunderstood is the practice of validating a debt - this is not a loophole to get out of paying your debts, this is a basic legal protection to prevent malicious collection agencies from fraudulently pursuing invalid debts. When you get a bill in the mail from a collections agency you can request that the agency validate the debt, and they will have to formally provide the following information before you are required to repay the debt:

  • [collection agency's] name and mailing address
  • the name of the creditor you owe it to
  • how much money you owe, written out to include interest, fees, payments, and credits
  • what to do if you don’t think it’s your debt
  • your debt collection rights, including your right to get information about the original creditor if you ask for it within 30 days of getting validation information from the collector

A collector has to give you “validation information” about the debt either when they first communicate with you or within five days of the first contact. The collector has to include the following

Federal Trade Commission - Consumer Advice - Debt collection FAQ

[–] Vinegar@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I live in an area with only 2 ISPs to choose from: AT&T or Comcast, and they both have data caps. The FCC has a publicly available Data Cap Experience Form on their site basically all you do is write a paragraph summarizing your experience with data caps.

If anyone wants help, fill out the form and let the FCC know much you hate data caps.

[–] Vinegar@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I was raised in a conservative Christian family that belonged to a church denomination branching off of Mormonism - It took (is taking?) years to deconstruct and understand the hate that I participated in and supported.

I strongly recommend watching the movie Jesus Camp to get a better understanding how Christian youth groups/camps can brainwash kids so they grow up to become adults who are so ignorant of the world outside their small Christian community that they know little more than what church authorities tell them. In my case I hated the LGBTQ+ community because hating you was my identity. I was taught to be one of "god's chosen people" preserving the correct way to live. It was often preached that natural disasters were god's way of punishing non-believers and those whose faith was not strong enough. The congregation I attended literally believed that all the natural disasters, pollution, and systemic failings around the world were god's vengeance against gays, liberals, and socialists. - e.g. I attended a sermon where the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill was literally and explicitly blamed on Obama's support for gay marriage.

If you were raised in such an insular, dependent, and ignorant community it is most likely you would learn the hate too. When you believe you and your religion are literally the center of the universe (you are the "chosen people" in a supernatural power struggle between good and evil) you too would feel anxious, threatened, pressured and quick to resort to violence.

The conservative Christians I grew up around who hated the LGTBQ+ community were generally emotionally immature. Their personal development, like mine, stunted by the church from an early age. It takes years to unlearn the judgemental conformity, moral superiority, and cognitive dissonance that is so integral to many congregations and denominations today. Faced with the prospect of questioning your core-beliefs, leaving your friends and family behind, and abandoning so much of your identity it's totally understandable, yet horrible, that people will choose to double down on the only beliefs they really understand.

That's why I hated the LGBTQ+ community - Because I was taught that you were the root of so much supernatural evil in the world, but if I were asked "why do you hate gay people" I would have told you "I don't hate gay people, I hate their actions. I just don't like them, it's unnatural". Eventually I realized that people are their actions and you can't hate one without hating the other.

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