I’m Canadian. And I’m already sorry for asking an ignorant question.
I know you have to pay for hospital visits in the states. I know lower economic status can come with lower access to birth control and sex education. But then, how do they afford to give birth? Do people ever avoid hospital visits because they don’t feel like they can’t afford it?
Do hospitals put people on a payment plan? Is it possible to give birth and not pay if you don’t have the means? How does it work in the states?
How does it all work?
Again. Canadian. And sorry.
They send the infant to debtors prison to begin working off the $70,000 hospital bill. They don’t have to pay the infant minimum wage though, and they charge them for room and board and meals, so by the time they’re 18 they are actually indebted to the hospital an average of 1.4 million dollars, which they will then begin working off as adults earning minimum wage.
I man you joke, but don’t give them any ideas.
Arkansas has upvoted your comment and taken notes.
Ohio awaits program completion and results to “improve” on it.
I know you’re joking, but Im pretty sure that there was a supreme court case that made debtors prison a thing of the past.
Might want to take a look at this then.
And this.
And this too.
EDITED TO ADD: While court cases involving “debtors prison” exist, NONE of them have “made debtors prison a thing of the past” in the US because imprisonment for private debt is very much alive and well today in 2023. Given that a person imprisoned over debt is unlikely to sue unless an organization such as ACLU takes on the case, and even more unlikely to win in courts that are dominated by commercial interests and partisan judges, it’s only going to get worse, not better. Going by the above linked articles that is exactly how it’s working out right now. Trying to prove that this horrific problem of criminalizing poverty does not exist today by pointing to a single 1983 lawsuit and going, “See! I told you!” is just completely privileged assholery.
Found it, it was 1983, much more recent than I remembered. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdal/page/file/918356/download
The feds themselves call it a civil rights violation, they have a good chance at a lawsuit. IMO, the judges who sign the arrest warrants need to be debarred or taken out of office or whatever happens to judges.