Political Crossfire Forums

Victims of crime is already an accepted practice in healthcare. Most (if not all) medical facilities have financial counselors that help victims qualify for such aid and can pay up to 100% of the costs. In addition, the financial counselors will also try to enroll patients in medicare/medicaid/obamacare/other government aid depending on if they meet federal poverty guidelines or criteria. This is standard for all uninsured patients as well. I'm not certain if all states have victims of crime aid and if they do have aid how that relates to the federal government, but this is already well established.

Also, just because healthcare is relatively private (which isn't a fair statement) doesn't mean facilities don't take advantage of such programs. Hospitals want to and actively do enroll patients in welfare. Welfare will pay the bill, patients don't.

Well, I've read conflicting things...

http://m.huffpost.com/ca/entry/3156466

That article basically says that hospitals will waive some, but there are gaps (such as prosthetic limbs). It also says that most of the costs for the Boston Bombing were absorbed by a state program (One Boston), which relies on donations. Finally, it mentions private charitable drives, which I've seen elsewhere.

On the other hand, I have seen that various states do have victims of crimes programs. I wasn't really able to find any stats about this, other than total estimated healthcare costs due to crime nation-wide.

What would you think about a federal program dedicated to such things, phosphide?

What phosphide said is totally not true. If you're an under-insured victim of violent crime you're likely to be treated like any other poor who comes into the emergency room with an injury.

That's a real shame. I can't imagine going through some sort of trauma and then being expected to pay an enormous hospital bill. Especially offensive to me is the rape kit charges - I've read a number of reports of women being charged upwards of $4000 for having treatment and evidence gathering done at the hospital.

I think this issue really ought to be something that everyone, of all political ideologies, should rally around. To me it is as non-partisan as it gets. It is unacceptable for victims of crime to have debt or financial obligations incurred through no fault of their own.

I hear what you're saying but I also think it's no less barbaric that we as a society let the victim of an unfortunate accident face financial ruin due to medical bills. I am kind of against getting together and saying "well these people should never have to file for bankruptcy due to needing a doctor" because it creates these classes of the more deserving or undeserving among us in this situation. In truth, we need a system that stops this bullshit and we CAN make that system. Singling out classes that shouldn't be ruined by this horribly unjust system just perpetuates the idea that others should be f**k over.

This is the ongoing dilemma. It's similar to some observations one could make about how we deal with homelessness at the policy level. If you're a family with children, there's a premium on getting you out of shelters and into housing. If you're a veteran, there's all sorts of efforts to do the same. If you're a single adult, meh. In truth, we could provide housing subsidies to every homeless person in the country at a cheaper cost than it takes to run shelters, but the moralistic notion that some of them just don't deserve to be given housing as much as others do gets in the way of that. But once we get homeless families with kids and homeless vets off the streets, there's a lot less political and social will to help those who are left.

Not a bad idea, Ex. (never expected me to say those words, did you?!!)

We have numerous Federal systems in place for disasters and other tragedies. Make sense to have one for crimes. There would be some details, of course.

For instance, in many crimes, neither party is 100% faultless. When determining fault for payment, what would end up happening is that one (or both) parties would be tasked with proving their innocence. That kinda runs against our "innocent until proven guilty" mantra.

Also, when possible, the perpetrator should pay. Would you want for the Fed to pony up the money initially, and then subrogate against the guilty party at a later date? It would work, just be very time consuming and expensive. In fact, in many cases, it'd be cheaper for the Fed to pay $10k to the victim, and never even try to recover from the perp.

The perpetrator should definitely pay if possible but that's often not going to be an option. Many will just not have any money to take and will be headed to jail so not much earnings to garnish in the future.