Medical Debt Horror

2020 will smack many people with horrible medical debt, no matter if they are insured or not.  Trying to deal with it is oh, so …bad.  Harassing phone calls and threatening letters, but no solutions.  Kill yourself?  How do they think you can pay if you do that?

Medical Debt Collector

Medical Debt

I started this painting before the coronavirus pandemic.  I have been fighting medical debt collectors for … forever.  I can read a bill and know what my insurance covers.  Providers are willing to work with you, except when they are wrong.  They dig their heels in and hire debt collectors rather than admit that they pay coders minimum wage, and the make errors.  Now with millions of Americans losing insurance along with their jobs, medical debt collections will be a growth industry.

Medical Debt

Antigens, progress

When I began this painting, I thought the wealthy would skate thru this pandemic, with barely a blip on their radar.  The left side was airier.  As each day progresses, I see that there may be a divide between the rich and the poor, but no one is escaping the effects of this disease.  I’ve made progress, but the painting is not nearly alarming enough.

Antigens, progress

What I did on my quarantine.

Not really quarantined, but focusing on the studio.  And we are going to repaint the living room.  I’m posting three paintings today.  I paint in tandem.  You may the same hue go from piece to piece.  I have several going, so that when the news and crazies are too much to take, I don’t have to BEGIN a painting, I can jump in and submerge myself.   CO2 has gone from being a pretty little thing, to a person haunted by the effects of CO2 on the environment.  No Spleen Quarantine harks back to my Talisman series.  The rainhat is the talisman.  My spleen was removed in 2016.  Didn’t do a thing for my ITP, but now places me smack in the middle of those with compromised immune systems.  Antigens are what is destroying my platelets, and virus and pandemic is evident.

Antigens

A beautiful day, and everyone is scared of the coronavirus.  My studio is isolated, so I began this painting.  Antigens play havoc with my immune system in the best of times.  Add pandemic and virus, divide into have’s and have-nots, and this is the beginning of a painting.  The canvas is 41″ x 54″.

Antigens

Medical Debt Collector MDC

My experience has been the insurance company or hospital screwed up the coding on my medical debts.  I pay those that seem correct, but who the hell can tell.  They sic a MDC on me until I prove them wrong.  Harrassment, intimidation, threats, and towers of paper work.

Medical Debt Collector MDC

Medical debts

You are smug that you have no medical debts and have never been hounded by a medical debt collector.  Must be nice.  Cyclops is the head of the MDC, a larger painting I will be posting.  This one may seem cartoonish, but I wouldn’t enjoy a painting that is as awful as these people!

Cyclops

Debt Collector

Insurance companies and hospitals are so busy playing one-up games with each other that they use debt collectors to “win”.  Just like mob leg-breakers, medical debt collectors use intimidation and lies.  Like the big bad wolf they huff and puff until you can find someone to be on your side and make one of the big boys back down.  Health care for profit is ….. wrong.

Medical Debt Collector as a Cyclops