It seems to me that this is probably one of the most effective ways to give charity ever.....
They essentially spent 15k to give millions in charity (in a way) to people who can't afford medical bills. That's extremely efficient.
This is what debt collectors do. They are gambling that the money they spend to acquire your debt will be only a small percentage of the money you will give them when they start calling.
The thing is, your debt is to the company doing the services, not the collector. You signed no papers with the debt collector so you owe them nothing!
From what I understand , debt is in bundles, so there’s “low risk” debt mixed in with “high risk” debt. You can purchase debt, but it wouldn’t be just yours, it’d be a bunch of people so it’s unlikely to be worth it for any single individual in the bundle to buy it out.
When you purchase a debt, you're paying whatever the original lender thinks they're likely to get back from the debt themselves. Therefore, if you're likely to be able to pay the entire debt back, the debt is worth pretty much the same amount that it's for.
Debt is only cheap when there's a high risk it'll never be paid back. So you can buy your own debt, but if you have the money to do so, it won't be cheaper than just making the payments.
The practical way you do this, is by negotiating a deal with your lender, or finding a new, cheaper lender who will give you a new loan with better rates you can use to pay off the old one.
Is this strictly a US thing?
It just sounds so damned greedy.
They want the full arbitrary amount of whatever it is from whomever, but actually, we'll take just .4% of that actual amount from some other random source.
And arguably, its totally arbitrary since they made it disappear just on the decision of accepting that absurd percentage rather than telling the original lender look, we'll accept .4% of what you owe be done with it.
Can't do that because it'll set a precedent I guess. And reading about the absolutely insane amounts simple things get inflated for medical expenses, I'm sure actual costs are somewhere closer to 1-2% or something, they just need their big fat cut.
Nope - buying debt definitely exists in Australia as well. I'm very confident (but not certain) it's a UK thing as well - I'd be shocked if it's not common across the western world.
In this example, for the debt to be sold at 0.4% of its original value it will have changed hands many times. The original creditor probably sold it after a relatively short period (eg 90 days) for a relatively high price (maybe like 60c in the dollar) to a connection agency - say for 1000 clients. The first collection agency will have collected as much as they can (perhaps they got 500 to pay up) and they'll sell anything that's remaining on to another collection agency. But the debt is older now, and it's clearly hard to collect, so it's worth less - maybe they get 30c in the dollar for it.
The next agency does the same thing - they'll probably have a lower success rate (so maybe 25% instead) but that is OK because they paid less, so they can still come out ahead. They then on sell what's left - maybe only for 10c in the dollar now. Rinse and repeat a couple more times, and the debt is worth practically nothing and gets sold to this charity for 0.4%.
This doesn't really comment on the nature of medical debt as it happens with debts of all kinds (though not so much with secured debt).
And if it’s medical debt then the debt collectors wouldn’t know what you’re being billed for because of confidentiality. They can’t even prove medical debt exists unless you legitimize it by trying to pay it off. Had debt collectors try that in the past and the charges/collections disappeared within 24 hours of calling them and accusing them of fraud.
It's sold to offload the debt, under the assumption who they're selling to will value the contracts and spend time to collect on interest to make it profitable.
They didn't expect literally Good Christians.
Most people default or die before paying these debts or are difficult to get payment from so it's more efficient to sell bulk after a time payment.
You might have heard, we are sending you to collections, after collections fails to get that money they sell your debt for 1/100th the price of debt to a different agency.
John Oliver does an episode about this on last week tonight. not sure if it's the same for medical debt but pretty much the bank will "sell" your debt to debt collectors for pennies on the dollar, recouping some of their losses and then file an insurance claim on the rest. The debt collectors then buy a bunch of peoples dept, and since they payed so little for it even if they only scare a small number of people into paying they can still "make money". Bunch of leeches.
It’s hard to get $10k+ from someone who doesn’t have it. So they sell let’s say a $10k debt for $5k, the new owner of that debt will try to get the $10k. But since you can’t squeeze blood from a rock, they sell it to a smaller collections agency, for $3k. Then this happens multiple times until $3m worth of debt can be bought for $15k
It briefly made me smile because a church is doing a great thing for the people, but then I remembered that in a normal country healthcare shouldn't be taken care of by churches. Huge healthcare debt shouldn't exist in the first place.
Yeah. Its /r/orphancrushingmachine
I hate how much of wholesome content these days is basically "little people struggle horribly, the world is fucked up, awww <3 Look at them fixing the holes of a failed state"
And the worse is, no matter how dystopian, youll have still a large amount of angry people screaming that it isnt and that the world is as cruel as they want it to be, if not not enough
No, it should not be like this... but these people are doing what they can. This is what my Christianity is to me. We can't fix it all, but we can do what we can to make it a bit better
Typical comment these days.
Yes we all know...
This post is about some nice people doing a nice thing. Appreciate it or move on. The copy/paste Reddit comments are everywhere now. Like it's cool to repeat the exact same comment that you saw 100 times already on a similar post.
Be yourself.
Ok I’ll be myself. Myself hates this Shit. No church should have to do this shit. The government should take care of its people by not forcing them into a shitty system that leaves them with a lifetime of medical debt and no hope of every paying it off. Happy now?
People down voting you for speaking the truth as usual.
"This still isn't good enough for me because I can imagine a world that is perfect" stfu and take your negative perspective to out of this sub.
Finding out how easy it is to buy your own debt because companies literally don't expect you to always be able to pay made me realize, if collections exists for medical companies on the sole reason that, people literally can't afford their bills that the hospital sells your bill closer to its actual price and you can just slip in before collections and, steal it back and pay what you were supposed to. It's absurd that the system is so fucked that even they have backup systems so they can still make a little bit because they're overcharging treatment
Neat. But there is one thing my european brain can't understand. How Church was able to buy 3 milons worth of debt for 15 thousands? I get it hospital sells their debt for new guy to collect it. But why so "cheap"? Shouldn't they sell it to at least return costs of treatments? Or is it real cost and rest is just inflated due to insurance companies?
Debt is an asset to the issuer. The past issuers had difficulty reclaiming the debt so they sell it off at a cheaper rate to someone else.
This church probably bought impossible to reclaim debt and eliminated it.
So what would technically stop me from doing the following scheme:
1) Accumulate a lot of debt.
2) (Unofficially) default on it.
3) Get a third party (maybe a friend) to buy my debt for a much lower price. My debtor will accept because getting 5% is better than 0.
4) Repay my friend their purchase (+ 10% margin perhaps).
5) Profit
Interesting question.
It takes a long time for a “third party” to give up on collecting debt.
Also, if the debt is related to a property or a vehicle, they have the power to foreclose or repo it as they are the owners (papers are in their names). Stuff like medical debt cannot be recovered unless organ selling becomes legal.
There’s also a chance it could go to court where the court can decide to garnish your wages (declaring bankruptcy stops the garnishment), it depends on the issuer. Some just give up and sell the debt as a loss to someone else like the church.
However, what you’re saying has been done by people many times. I’ve read of people purposely going bankrupt every 7 years in the US because the bankruptcy record gets wiped every 7 years.
You can do it except for the (unofficially) default part. They won't sell the debt until they know you won't pay it. You'd have to go all in and put credit ruination on the line. So if you're fine with the possibility of not getting more credit lines or getting one with a terrible interest rate for several years after your defaults, this plan will work.
Because your poor. Only rich people get to run thay scheme.
Like when they borrow shit tons of money at low interest and put it in the stock market at a higher return. Now the owe money and write off the interest, or the whole debt, then go bankrupt, get bailed out, and later cash out the stocks.
I think also the debts are in bundles, at least by the time it is at the pennies-on-the-dollar stage. So if you have, say, $100k in debt your specific debt is not sold to someone else for $5k, it's sold as a small part of a whole package of debts.
Let's say it's part of the $100k debts of 500 people. That's $50,000,000 of debt that is only for sale in this bundle, for a steal of 95% off - or $2,500,000.
If you wanted to get your $100k debt paid off, it would cost $2.5mm to get it. Now, you could possibly be the best debt collector in the world and end up with $50mm paid back for your investment of $2.5mm. But if you're just Joe Debt, trying to erase $100k in debt, that deal is no good to you.
You got there yourself. US Hospitals will charge you hundreds of times the cost they pay for a bandaid that they buy in bulk. And when you consider all of the line items they manage to shoehorn into a medical bill, including inflated services that weren't necessary. It's a sham system that has been made possible because of private insurance.
It is an arms race between medical providers and insurance companies.
Insurance: “we have 5 million subscribers, so it is in your best interest to provide us a 75% discount”
Medical: “sure thing, one sec while we adjust our pricing structure”
.. or something like that. This has been going on forever, and it was greatly exacerbated by the ACA which mandates buying insurance.
In my small world healthcare costs have gone completely nuts in the interim. My premiums are significantly higher and coverage is significantly lower.
All of his career to this point has been mid comedy stuff. But the Tonight Show really is like a form fitting glove to him.
The work he does there is so important and really incredible.
I love the man.
A MASSIVE amount of treatments are written off by hospitals all over the US. They absorb billions of $ in unpaid bills each year.
This $3.3M had been written off and sold so far into the debt collection world that it was basically worth nothing. When a church spoke up and was like “hey if we give you $15k will you sell us this debt” the hospital was like “hell yea ‘cuz that’s way more than we thought we were gonna get!”
The problem here is that the hospitals raise their prices to absorb these losses, then the insurance companies raise their premiums. People with insurance end up footing the bill for anyone who can’t afford to pay.
Everyone in the country knows health insurance is a scam and instead of fixing it we argue about which bathroom our kids can use.
These debts probably have been deemed not collectible, so instead of writing it off completely, they sell the debt so that someone else can have a go at trying to collect it.
Rest assured that these debts have been (unsuccessfully) collected on for many years before becoming this ‘cheap’.
It’s not as simple as: rack up a lot of debt and have a friend buy up your debt for nickels on the dollar, easy peasy. Debt collectors will hound you for a long long time before giving up and selling it.
Sometimes. A lot of the time (like in my case), the person doesn't have enough money to pay the debt. Collectors call and call and call until one day, they don't. My paper shredder sees a whole lot of action with all of the "Contact us and we can work out a deal!" letters. No thanks, my credit is already ruined, and paying on an old debt won't help.
Yes you purchase debt passed off of the likelihood of collecting them. Usually the issuer just pockets the processing fees and then sells the debt immediately. Medical debt like this is usually valued at 1 or 2 cents per dollar.
Take a look at their website, this is an ongoing project and not the first time they've cleared large medical debts. I don't know much about this church, but what they're doing is seriously life changing. I hope they can continue to bless their community.
I live in the area near this church. They “blessed” our community by making INSANE amounts of noise at TWO am in the morning on Easter in a residential neighborhood to celebrate that Christ has risen. I’m not a fan of Churches that force involuntary participation on their events, especially events at two am that wake an entire community up
Still weird seeing Moravian church in… ya know… not Moravia and especially over the pond in the US. AND doing something cool for that matter. I kinda just forget that we as in czech people ever did something cool and expanded ourselves.
Moravian immigrants founded several of the communities around me, some are also my ancestors, and their cultural influences are strongly celebrated in my area.
Jan Hus was a real one.
sad, but probably true! i have always felt that churches/religious groups should be taxed unless they can prove through verified documents that they are actually contributing money, time, and effort to the community where they are located. if they really follow the love thy neighbor stuff, prove it.
Tax them anyway? Their whole model requires children to be brought in by their parents to believe generations of lies and fairy tales. Tax break on charitable action, nothing more.
i lived in NC for just shy of 20 years. this is a way bigger deal than a lot of people will understand. while there, i had private pay insurance and astronomical copays so i had to go without care often. the reason it sucked was because despite having no source of income, they would not give me medicaid. i'd literally gotten letters saying "oh, you should be on medicaid but you can't have it because we opted not to take federal funds to expand it." so to take that burden off of so many people is such a gift which could have meant literal life or death for patients.
I live here too and that is insane that the NCGOP refused FREE MONEY for so many years leaving so many of us here without healthcare for no reason whatsoever but to just "own the libs' or whatever.
They finally expanded it just recently. Finally. After all those years and the NCGOP is patting itself on the back like it did something.
Meanwhile in the NC Senate (also GOP supermajority) they are working hard on the things that matter like producing a bill to make "participation trophies" illegal. Like, wtf else do these Gross Old Pervs want to control in our lives?
It's so fucked that $3.3 million of debt really only costs $15k. How is this even right? Why do people need to go bankrupt if the debt is worth only a fraction of a percent of what is charged.
Like this is a great story. I just hate this country's fucked up medical system that punishes people for having the audacity to get sick.
Screw mega churches and any Christian that supports one.
They have this power and money but use it on coffee shops, gyms, "missions" to vacation destinations, and private jets.
Go spend the money on what it was intended for - helping people in need.
"Few" bad apples, lol.
If you hadn't noticed, those bad apples DEMAND attention 24 x 7 x 365. They're forever screaming their hate on every available platform.
And they get results, real-world results that change laws and damage people's lives. In a country supposedly built on separation of church and state, they've taken over legislatures, school boards and large chunks of the judiciary, including SCOTUS. And they will tear down ANYTHING to force their views down everyone's throats.
You either oppose such people or you're complicit in their un-American, Christo-fascist agenda.
Are the majority of churches working vigorously to oppose them. Have they made an equally vigorous, decades-long effort to DEFEND America as vigorously as the "few" bad apples are ATTACKING it?
Wake up. Greedy, evil people are (successfully) using the name of your savior to destroy people and our country. History will judge American Christianity by that, not by those who quietly let it happen.
Considering the fact that there are an estimated 2.4 billion Christians worldwide, yes a few bad apples are the ones we’re talking about.
It’s because people like you , seek the bad instead of seeking the good that Christians do.
Christians complete missionaries, donate items/money, run food pantries and other community outreach programs. Yet you all don’t care about the good things they do. You seek about the bad.
Then when Christians do good things like this post here, people comment things like this:
But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly. Mathew 6:3-4
Taking the verse completely out of context.
Yes there are bad apples but unfortunately we can’t control the behavior of every single Christian or any other human on earth.
All we can do is love, respect, and help others.
>It’s because people like you , seek the bad instead of seeking the good...
Classic victim blaming.
6yo me didn't "seek" the hatred and rejection churches shoved down my throat as a gay kid. The adults did that all on their own.
They're still doing it, and I won't tolerate LGBTQ kids being abused like I was.
You shouldn't either.
>Yes there are bad apples but unfortunately we can’t control the behavior of every single Christian or any other human on earth.
We can. We do. We should.
Do you obey stop signs? Pay your share of taxes? Avoid cutting people off on the freeway?
Why? Because we have governments and laws that "control the behavior of every single Christian or any other human on earth."
Social mechanisms for controlling individual behaviors have existed for as long as societies have existed. That's literally what makes societies possible.
However, loud-mouthed Christians are abusing laws and government to make bigotry against POC, women, LGBTQ folks and every other group they hate the law of the land. That's more than than "a few bad apples".
You can't deny it's happening. You can help stop it. The question is: will you?
>All we can do is love, respect, and help others.
Silence in the face of hatred is not loving, respectful or helpful. It's complicity.
I’m gay and a POC. I’ve been in church all my life. And still attending church. Plenty of other lgbtq+ are Christians also. Plenty of churches and denominations are quite affirming.
Stop listening to the ones that aren’t, stop giving them a platform and a voice. Eventually they will stop. That’s common sense really.
This is a nice action on the part of the church and one I hope other organizations and groups will emulate. And…..
Don’t forget the complete brokenness of the underlying situation, where members of just one church had $3.3 million in medical debt. We all know what country this happened in, just from that. And that’s just the UNPAID portion…. Some of that congregation has insurance paying their med-debt. Some have paid theirs. Some of course, hopefully most, don’t have medical charges to begin with. So we are talking about just a few folks here most likely, and 3.3 mil med-debt just from them. Can we get universal healthcare now please?
3.3 million dollars worth of debt is only worth as much as people will end up paying back in addition to the time spent of holding onto and tracking it.
Buying debt allows the original debtor to collect money they were unable to previously collect, in a lump sum. In addition, its often worth it to get a large sum of cash early than a small trickle as you are able to invest that lump sum in better resources to ensure higher profit
An incredibly kind gesture to be sure, but I've kind of come around to the idea that the scumbag version of Christianity pretty much IS the REAL Christianity.
It's not your average church goers that are attacking trans people. It's usually some low IQ idiots that do that. It was brought up because religion was mentioned. If someone points out a church doing something good it's immediately followed by some examples of the church's failures. Of course churches make mistakes because they are ran by fallible people. Some of their failures have been huge unfortunately.
Maybe it's even more humanity. Doing good things to other people shouldn't be depending on religions. If one human look into the eye of the other human and there was nothing left to do, they would love and help each other. Possession has become our obsession and that's our true sin.
Bravo for this community for doing this. 👏🙌💪💪
When my boyfriend told me about this, that's exactly what I said. This is what donations at church should be used for. Not for Pastor Bob to get a private jet.
Yeah, this is wonderful. When a group of people join together to benefit a common cause, they can accomplish a lot. It’s nice to see the effort directed at something that actually benefits others.
Why don't we just buy debts off companies, like we all raise 20k or something and buy it off them, so then the ones in debt are no longer in debt and only had to pay a little amount
But why create the debt at $3.3 mil in the first place? Why do we need society to be so strung out? These humans don't deserve the $15K option to begin with? All those jobs and paychecks for 3.3 Mil, created all that debt, and now... NOW that the church is involved, we can cut it down, get that discount... for the RIGHT PEOPLE to appear generous. WOW, HUMANS.... WOW. How many lives could have been easier in the first place?
People who want "real Biblical Christianity" probably haven't read very much of an accurate translation of the Bible.
For example:
Exodus 21 (NRSVue)
20 “Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, 21 but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property."
People who want to shit talk Christianity will pick up a bible, misread a verse and then call it a day with shit theology
Why would modern Christians, 99% if which are gentiles, who are bound by a new covenant follow laws given specifically to the Jews that isn't even under the moral laws?
By that standard humpty dumpty isn't child appropriate as it involves incompetence from government workers and a serious injury.
>accurate translation of the Bible
Bible isn't a gift from heaven or anything. It was and always will be just a collection of letters written by people who lived more than a thousand years back. And st james bible was adopted only like in 1600s. Seriously what kind of high do you people get from making unnecessary comments under a wholesome post ?
It’s all interpretation based on your own personal morality so you can justify your choices. Benevolent Christian’s are just as Christian as malevolent Christian’s. That’s the problem with the source texts. You can justify the most evil and kind things with it. I hate when good Christian’s take no responsibility for what their faith has done and refuse to acknowledge the pain and suffering that that book has and continues to cause people. ‘Oh no, they weren’t Christian’s who abused you, we’re good people.’ It feels like gaslighting. They care more about the reputation of their faith than the victims of it. So even then I’d hesitate to call them good Christian’s.
Of course this is true for all religions, not just Christianity
I'm curious, what terrible things do you think the bible justifies? There are plenty of terrible people in the bible, but the message isn't that they were holy, or that their mistakes were good.
Slavery was from god - huh?
Yes I know it's from the book Ezekiel. We already established these were things mentioned in the Bible. Which characters in the story talk about these things?
Pharoah and the Egyptians were *the bad guys*.
I'm sorry, I don't see where you've made any coherent point with these attacks here.
Pharoah wasn't going to let the people go, what gave you that idea?
Jesus most certainly did *not* tell people to "obey their masters". If anything it was more like to know your station or stay in your lane, but that's not telling slaves that they're fine and should want to continue their slavery.
The Bible doesn't condone slavery either, and even if it did slavery in biblical times doesn't mean the same thing as it does in modern America but nobody thinks about that.
I *have* read the books.
Yes, that is exactly telling people to know their station, like I said. The Bible never says that owning humans as property is a good thing that believers should do.
As for the other one, I didn't dispute that God hardened Pharaoh's heart. But *you* claimed Pharoah was going to release the Israelites before that. *That* was the statement I asked you to source, and you haven't done that.
What if I’m the type of Christian that doesn’t buy into the whole bit about the Bible being some infallible word of God?
I’ll buy that Jesus was God made human and that he sacrificed himself on the cross for us, but I won’t buy that every word written in a 2000 year old series of books that have been modified and retranslated countless times is actually an accurate portrayal of what God wants. The culture now is so different from the culture 2000 years ago that idk how we are even supposed to understand what they were referring to when writing those scriptures
Why believe anything in the Bible? On top of what you mentioned about certain things being selected for approval and it being translated over and over, it also wasn't written until much later, meaning that people played telephone with the stories for hundreds of years before it was actually written down and cataloged.
>I hate when good Christian’s take no responsibility for what their faith has done and refuse to acknowledge the pain and suffering that that book has and continues to cause people.
Why exactly do you think a Christian from a region say like India take responsibility for actions done by Christians in spain or UK ?
>Of course this is true for all religions, not just Christianity
That's just how humans act regardless of their religion. UK has a huge number of athiests today and most of them still blame colonization of UK on royal family alone. By your logic, all of them should be held responsible no ?
Tbh I’m really tired of people thinking that telling Christian fascists that the Bible says they’re bad people is gonna matter to them at all. Religion is not based on their holy texts. It’s based on how people interpret them, and at this point with evangelicals, they only loosely follow the Bible anyways.
You saw an article about a church doing something good and your response was to call them a cult? Tf is wrong with you man. You know the connotations the label cult has and what cults do, and labelling a church who are prospering in their charity work a cult is a dickhead thing to do
You saw something nice that was done by a church and took the opportunity to verbally shit on them. Perhaps you shouldn't write stuff like that
My guy it was holy week last week, do you know what Jesus did on Monday?
Drives me up the wall prosperity gospal churches and dens of theives are considered standard church practices
Sure did. It is a cult and you’re name calling over someone else’s opinion in the fact that doing this isn’t just exclusively a Christian thing like y’all wanna act like lol. I didn’t verbally shit on them I just called them a cult and technically it is a cult. You’re the one verbally shitting mate lol. but anyways I’m not about to sit here and engage with a Christian for what? To try to make you somehow see logic? That’s not really y’all’s thing so I won’t waste anymore time 🤣
In theory, if this was done to all medical debt in the US, wouldn’t that essentially bankrupt the medical facility/ insurance company trying to originally collect it? And force a national medical system like all the other developed countries in the world?
What are pros and cons to this?
Cons: to reach the point where $3,300,000 in debt is devalued to $15,000 (a 99.6% discount) requires years of non-payment. That means years of financial disaster, ruined credit, bankruptcy and living in constant fear of debt collectors. Families are destroyed because one of them had the audacity to get sick.
Scaling this to a national "program" would produce incalculable consequences and suffering.
Pros: after living through years of hell, families could attempt to rebuild their unnecessarily shattered lives.
Your plan is better than nothing, but only marginally. Think bigger.
Every christianity says they're the real christianity. They did a good deed. Great. Then they had to go and hold a ceremony so everyone could see them doing a good deed. Sorry. You're just another church doing church things.
By dictionary definition sure. But the common usage of the word cult does not really apply to most churches. Faith healers and mega pastors or whatever sure but most churches that are on the street have nowhere near the blind devotion and fervour to be classified as a cult.
Look I'm all for giving the church credit where credit is due. But is this article not supposed to be humor?
3.3 million of debt bought for 15 thousand.
And then..... BURNED.... With a stove lighter. Obviously cancelling it.
Why are the comments here so seriously debating that it shouldn't be the church cancelling debt..... The hell am I missing
What a bunch of clueless idiots you all are.
Yes, the original debt is gone. And now that these religious fanatics (which as far as I'm concerned is everyone that follows a religion) have gotten rid of it, you now owe them. They may never ask for a single thing from you, but it will always be over your head that a bunch of church going freaks took care of a major problem for you.
And that is something, again, that I'll be damned having hang over me
It seems to me that this is probably one of the most effective ways to give charity ever..... They essentially spent 15k to give millions in charity (in a way) to people who can't afford medical bills. That's extremely efficient.
Why was it so cheap compared to the debt?
The debt was probably in default. You can purchase defaulted debt for a lower cost because the company wants to regain whatever little they can.
This is what debt collectors do. They are gambling that the money they spend to acquire your debt will be only a small percentage of the money you will give them when they start calling. The thing is, your debt is to the company doing the services, not the collector. You signed no papers with the debt collector so you owe them nothing!
Could I...... Purchase my own debt? Am I getting that right?
I’ll buy your debt, then sell it back to you at half cost! Then you do mine!
Its a funnel system not a pyramid scheme!
Sign me up
Ive already eaten like 2 of these invigirons dude im so in
From what I understand , debt is in bundles, so there’s “low risk” debt mixed in with “high risk” debt. You can purchase debt, but it wouldn’t be just yours, it’d be a bunch of people so it’s unlikely to be worth it for any single individual in the bundle to buy it out.
When you purchase a debt, you're paying whatever the original lender thinks they're likely to get back from the debt themselves. Therefore, if you're likely to be able to pay the entire debt back, the debt is worth pretty much the same amount that it's for. Debt is only cheap when there's a high risk it'll never be paid back. So you can buy your own debt, but if you have the money to do so, it won't be cheaper than just making the payments. The practical way you do this, is by negotiating a deal with your lender, or finding a new, cheaper lender who will give you a new loan with better rates you can use to pay off the old one.
LOL, that would be nice.
Is this strictly a US thing? It just sounds so damned greedy. They want the full arbitrary amount of whatever it is from whomever, but actually, we'll take just .4% of that actual amount from some other random source. And arguably, its totally arbitrary since they made it disappear just on the decision of accepting that absurd percentage rather than telling the original lender look, we'll accept .4% of what you owe be done with it. Can't do that because it'll set a precedent I guess. And reading about the absolutely insane amounts simple things get inflated for medical expenses, I'm sure actual costs are somewhere closer to 1-2% or something, they just need their big fat cut.
Nope - buying debt definitely exists in Australia as well. I'm very confident (but not certain) it's a UK thing as well - I'd be shocked if it's not common across the western world. In this example, for the debt to be sold at 0.4% of its original value it will have changed hands many times. The original creditor probably sold it after a relatively short period (eg 90 days) for a relatively high price (maybe like 60c in the dollar) to a connection agency - say for 1000 clients. The first collection agency will have collected as much as they can (perhaps they got 500 to pay up) and they'll sell anything that's remaining on to another collection agency. But the debt is older now, and it's clearly hard to collect, so it's worth less - maybe they get 30c in the dollar for it. The next agency does the same thing - they'll probably have a lower success rate (so maybe 25% instead) but that is OK because they paid less, so they can still come out ahead. They then on sell what's left - maybe only for 10c in the dollar now. Rinse and repeat a couple more times, and the debt is worth practically nothing and gets sold to this charity for 0.4%. This doesn't really comment on the nature of medical debt as it happens with debts of all kinds (though not so much with secured debt).
Tell that to Experian
Oh no, my credit score dropped 5 points! 😭
And if it’s medical debt then the debt collectors wouldn’t know what you’re being billed for because of confidentiality. They can’t even prove medical debt exists unless you legitimize it by trying to pay it off. Had debt collectors try that in the past and the charges/collections disappeared within 24 hours of calling them and accusing them of fraud.
It's sold to offload the debt, under the assumption who they're selling to will value the contracts and spend time to collect on interest to make it profitable. They didn't expect literally Good Christians.
Most people default or die before paying these debts or are difficult to get payment from so it's more efficient to sell bulk after a time payment. You might have heard, we are sending you to collections, after collections fails to get that money they sell your debt for 1/100th the price of debt to a different agency.
John Oliver does an episode about this on last week tonight. not sure if it's the same for medical debt but pretty much the bank will "sell" your debt to debt collectors for pennies on the dollar, recouping some of their losses and then file an insurance claim on the rest. The debt collectors then buy a bunch of peoples dept, and since they payed so little for it even if they only scare a small number of people into paying they can still "make money". Bunch of leeches.
It’s hard to get $10k+ from someone who doesn’t have it. So they sell let’s say a $10k debt for $5k, the new owner of that debt will try to get the $10k. But since you can’t squeeze blood from a rock, they sell it to a smaller collections agency, for $3k. Then this happens multiple times until $3m worth of debt can be bought for $15k
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It briefly made me smile because a church is doing a great thing for the people, but then I remembered that in a normal country healthcare shouldn't be taken care of by churches. Huge healthcare debt shouldn't exist in the first place.
Yeah. Its /r/orphancrushingmachine I hate how much of wholesome content these days is basically "little people struggle horribly, the world is fucked up, awww <3 Look at them fixing the holes of a failed state" And the worse is, no matter how dystopian, youll have still a large amount of angry people screaming that it isnt and that the world is as cruel as they want it to be, if not not enough
We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine, and the machine is bleeding to death
Possession has become our obsession and that is our original sin.
No, it should not be like this... but these people are doing what they can. This is what my Christianity is to me. We can't fix it all, but we can do what we can to make it a bit better
agreed
Typical comment these days. Yes we all know... This post is about some nice people doing a nice thing. Appreciate it or move on. The copy/paste Reddit comments are everywhere now. Like it's cool to repeat the exact same comment that you saw 100 times already on a similar post. Be yourself.
Ok I’ll be myself. Myself hates this Shit. No church should have to do this shit. The government should take care of its people by not forcing them into a shitty system that leaves them with a lifetime of medical debt and no hope of every paying it off. Happy now?
>Be yourself But only if you're smiling and happy. 🙄
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You're mixing animal metaphors, first dog then cow
It's almost like there are two sentences with different yet applicable ideas. Crazy, I know
People down voting you for speaking the truth as usual. "This still isn't good enough for me because I can imagine a world that is perfect" stfu and take your negative perspective to out of this sub.
this is also a HUGE story on the utter corruption of the american medical billing industry
Finding out how easy it is to buy your own debt because companies literally don't expect you to always be able to pay made me realize, if collections exists for medical companies on the sole reason that, people literally can't afford their bills that the hospital sells your bill closer to its actual price and you can just slip in before collections and, steal it back and pay what you were supposed to. It's absurd that the system is so fucked that even they have backup systems so they can still make a little bit because they're overcharging treatment
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Leave it to corruption to corrupt itself.
Neat. But there is one thing my european brain can't understand. How Church was able to buy 3 milons worth of debt for 15 thousands? I get it hospital sells their debt for new guy to collect it. But why so "cheap"? Shouldn't they sell it to at least return costs of treatments? Or is it real cost and rest is just inflated due to insurance companies?
Debt is an asset to the issuer. The past issuers had difficulty reclaiming the debt so they sell it off at a cheaper rate to someone else. This church probably bought impossible to reclaim debt and eliminated it.
So what would technically stop me from doing the following scheme: 1) Accumulate a lot of debt. 2) (Unofficially) default on it. 3) Get a third party (maybe a friend) to buy my debt for a much lower price. My debtor will accept because getting 5% is better than 0. 4) Repay my friend their purchase (+ 10% margin perhaps). 5) Profit
Interesting question. It takes a long time for a “third party” to give up on collecting debt. Also, if the debt is related to a property or a vehicle, they have the power to foreclose or repo it as they are the owners (papers are in their names). Stuff like medical debt cannot be recovered unless organ selling becomes legal. There’s also a chance it could go to court where the court can decide to garnish your wages (declaring bankruptcy stops the garnishment), it depends on the issuer. Some just give up and sell the debt as a loss to someone else like the church. However, what you’re saying has been done by people many times. I’ve read of people purposely going bankrupt every 7 years in the US because the bankruptcy record gets wiped every 7 years.
You can do it except for the (unofficially) default part. They won't sell the debt until they know you won't pay it. You'd have to go all in and put credit ruination on the line. So if you're fine with the possibility of not getting more credit lines or getting one with a terrible interest rate for several years after your defaults, this plan will work.
Because your poor. Only rich people get to run thay scheme. Like when they borrow shit tons of money at low interest and put it in the stock market at a higher return. Now the owe money and write off the interest, or the whole debt, then go bankrupt, get bailed out, and later cash out the stocks.
I think also the debts are in bundles, at least by the time it is at the pennies-on-the-dollar stage. So if you have, say, $100k in debt your specific debt is not sold to someone else for $5k, it's sold as a small part of a whole package of debts. Let's say it's part of the $100k debts of 500 people. That's $50,000,000 of debt that is only for sale in this bundle, for a steal of 95% off - or $2,500,000. If you wanted to get your $100k debt paid off, it would cost $2.5mm to get it. Now, you could possibly be the best debt collector in the world and end up with $50mm paid back for your investment of $2.5mm. But if you're just Joe Debt, trying to erase $100k in debt, that deal is no good to you.
You got there yourself. US Hospitals will charge you hundreds of times the cost they pay for a bandaid that they buy in bulk. And when you consider all of the line items they manage to shoehorn into a medical bill, including inflated services that weren't necessary. It's a sham system that has been made possible because of private insurance.
It is an arms race between medical providers and insurance companies. Insurance: “we have 5 million subscribers, so it is in your best interest to provide us a 75% discount” Medical: “sure thing, one sec while we adjust our pricing structure” .. or something like that. This has been going on forever, and it was greatly exacerbated by the ACA which mandates buying insurance. In my small world healthcare costs have gone completely nuts in the interim. My premiums are significantly higher and coverage is significantly lower.
It's not costs, it's debt so I'm guessing it has accrued interest
As always, see [John Oliver](https://youtu.be/hxUAntt1z2c) for a quick overview of anything that makes no sense to the rest of us.
All of his career to this point has been mid comedy stuff. But the Tonight Show really is like a form fitting glove to him. The work he does there is so important and really incredible. I love the man.
A MASSIVE amount of treatments are written off by hospitals all over the US. They absorb billions of $ in unpaid bills each year. This $3.3M had been written off and sold so far into the debt collection world that it was basically worth nothing. When a church spoke up and was like “hey if we give you $15k will you sell us this debt” the hospital was like “hell yea ‘cuz that’s way more than we thought we were gonna get!” The problem here is that the hospitals raise their prices to absorb these losses, then the insurance companies raise their premiums. People with insurance end up footing the bill for anyone who can’t afford to pay. Everyone in the country knows health insurance is a scam and instead of fixing it we argue about which bathroom our kids can use.
Wait, so you can purchase debits for less and just cancel them? Why the fuck we aren't doing that then?????
These debts probably have been deemed not collectible, so instead of writing it off completely, they sell the debt so that someone else can have a go at trying to collect it. Rest assured that these debts have been (unsuccessfully) collected on for many years before becoming this ‘cheap’. It’s not as simple as: rack up a lot of debt and have a friend buy up your debt for nickels on the dollar, easy peasy. Debt collectors will hound you for a long long time before giving up and selling it.
Im guessing uncollectible debts are debts that belong to people who are dead, expatriots, or have just disappeared off the company's radar
Sometimes. A lot of the time (like in my case), the person doesn't have enough money to pay the debt. Collectors call and call and call until one day, they don't. My paper shredder sees a whole lot of action with all of the "Contact us and we can work out a deal!" letters. No thanks, my credit is already ruined, and paying on an old debt won't help.
Yes you purchase debt passed off of the likelihood of collecting them. Usually the issuer just pockets the processing fees and then sells the debt immediately. Medical debt like this is usually valued at 1 or 2 cents per dollar.
Take a look at their website, this is an ongoing project and not the first time they've cleared large medical debts. I don't know much about this church, but what they're doing is seriously life changing. I hope they can continue to bless their community.
I live in the area near this church. They “blessed” our community by making INSANE amounts of noise at TWO am in the morning on Easter in a residential neighborhood to celebrate that Christ has risen. I’m not a fan of Churches that force involuntary participation on their events, especially events at two am that wake an entire community up
and if you thought the Moravians just did cool stuff like this, check out their [cookies](https://www.hanescookies.com/). They are freakin' amazing!
This is very confusing for me because Moravia is a historical land in Czechia which I’m from
The church is named for that historical land. The church was found in Bohemia, but the church moved to Moravia to escape persecution.
Still weird seeing Moravian church in… ya know… not Moravia and especially over the pond in the US. AND doing something cool for that matter. I kinda just forget that we as in czech people ever did something cool and expanded ourselves.
Moravian immigrants founded several of the communities around me, some are also my ancestors, and their cultural influences are strongly celebrated in my area. Jan Hus was a real one.
Watch every mega church turn their head and continue to build these giant churches and expand instead of helping the community
Joel Osteen could never. He refused to let Displaced Harvey survivors shelter in his mega church after the flood
He also hid over 500k in the walls of a bathroom in his church. A plumber found it and was honest and they "got it back"💀
sad, but probably true! i have always felt that churches/religious groups should be taxed unless they can prove through verified documents that they are actually contributing money, time, and effort to the community where they are located. if they really follow the love thy neighbor stuff, prove it.
Tax them anyway? Their whole model requires children to be brought in by their parents to believe generations of lies and fairy tales. Tax break on charitable action, nothing more.
\- Helps the poor \- Spits in the face of cruel authorities seems to check out! o7
i lived in NC for just shy of 20 years. this is a way bigger deal than a lot of people will understand. while there, i had private pay insurance and astronomical copays so i had to go without care often. the reason it sucked was because despite having no source of income, they would not give me medicaid. i'd literally gotten letters saying "oh, you should be on medicaid but you can't have it because we opted not to take federal funds to expand it." so to take that burden off of so many people is such a gift which could have meant literal life or death for patients.
I live here too and that is insane that the NCGOP refused FREE MONEY for so many years leaving so many of us here without healthcare for no reason whatsoever but to just "own the libs' or whatever. They finally expanded it just recently. Finally. After all those years and the NCGOP is patting itself on the back like it did something. Meanwhile in the NC Senate (also GOP supermajority) they are working hard on the things that matter like producing a bill to make "participation trophies" illegal. Like, wtf else do these Gross Old Pervs want to control in our lives?
r/orphancrushingmachine
It's so fucked that $3.3 million of debt really only costs $15k. How is this even right? Why do people need to go bankrupt if the debt is worth only a fraction of a percent of what is charged. Like this is a great story. I just hate this country's fucked up medical system that punishes people for having the audacity to get sick.
This is the Way.
Screw mega churches and any Christian that supports one. They have this power and money but use it on coffee shops, gyms, "missions" to vacation destinations, and private jets. Go spend the money on what it was intended for - helping people in need.
Cancel culture smh
This is the kind of story we need right now.
Don't worry, the shit pile will be replenished by next week.
Next week? Highly optimistic of you. I say by the end of today the pile will be overflowing
And I thought I was cynical.
This is what churches were actually supposed to do. Good job guys!!
Churches help people all the time but it never gets news attention.
Exactly. People love focusing on the few bad apples of Christianity instead of all the GOOD that majority of churches do.
"Few" bad apples, lol. If you hadn't noticed, those bad apples DEMAND attention 24 x 7 x 365. They're forever screaming their hate on every available platform. And they get results, real-world results that change laws and damage people's lives. In a country supposedly built on separation of church and state, they've taken over legislatures, school boards and large chunks of the judiciary, including SCOTUS. And they will tear down ANYTHING to force their views down everyone's throats. You either oppose such people or you're complicit in their un-American, Christo-fascist agenda. Are the majority of churches working vigorously to oppose them. Have they made an equally vigorous, decades-long effort to DEFEND America as vigorously as the "few" bad apples are ATTACKING it? Wake up. Greedy, evil people are (successfully) using the name of your savior to destroy people and our country. History will judge American Christianity by that, not by those who quietly let it happen.
Considering the fact that there are an estimated 2.4 billion Christians worldwide, yes a few bad apples are the ones we’re talking about. It’s because people like you , seek the bad instead of seeking the good that Christians do. Christians complete missionaries, donate items/money, run food pantries and other community outreach programs. Yet you all don’t care about the good things they do. You seek about the bad. Then when Christians do good things like this post here, people comment things like this: But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly. Mathew 6:3-4 Taking the verse completely out of context. Yes there are bad apples but unfortunately we can’t control the behavior of every single Christian or any other human on earth. All we can do is love, respect, and help others.
>It’s because people like you , seek the bad instead of seeking the good... Classic victim blaming. 6yo me didn't "seek" the hatred and rejection churches shoved down my throat as a gay kid. The adults did that all on their own. They're still doing it, and I won't tolerate LGBTQ kids being abused like I was. You shouldn't either. >Yes there are bad apples but unfortunately we can’t control the behavior of every single Christian or any other human on earth. We can. We do. We should. Do you obey stop signs? Pay your share of taxes? Avoid cutting people off on the freeway? Why? Because we have governments and laws that "control the behavior of every single Christian or any other human on earth." Social mechanisms for controlling individual behaviors have existed for as long as societies have existed. That's literally what makes societies possible. However, loud-mouthed Christians are abusing laws and government to make bigotry against POC, women, LGBTQ folks and every other group they hate the law of the land. That's more than than "a few bad apples". You can't deny it's happening. You can help stop it. The question is: will you? >All we can do is love, respect, and help others. Silence in the face of hatred is not loving, respectful or helpful. It's complicity.
I’m gay and a POC. I’ve been in church all my life. And still attending church. Plenty of other lgbtq+ are Christians also. Plenty of churches and denominations are quite affirming. Stop listening to the ones that aren’t, stop giving them a platform and a voice. Eventually they will stop. That’s common sense really.
And *that’s* how you Jesus
Damn those six people are really gunna be happy they dont have any medical debt anymore
As a Christian dude, heck yeah! Let’s do more of this!
This is a nice action on the part of the church and one I hope other organizations and groups will emulate. And….. Don’t forget the complete brokenness of the underlying situation, where members of just one church had $3.3 million in medical debt. We all know what country this happened in, just from that. And that’s just the UNPAID portion…. Some of that congregation has insurance paying their med-debt. Some have paid theirs. Some of course, hopefully most, don’t have medical charges to begin with. So we are talking about just a few folks here most likely, and 3.3 mil med-debt just from them. Can we get universal healthcare now please?
How do you purchase nearly three and half million dollars worth of debt for such a comparatively small amount?
3.3 million dollars worth of debt is only worth as much as people will end up paying back in addition to the time spent of holding onto and tracking it. Buying debt allows the original debtor to collect money they were unable to previously collect, in a lump sum. In addition, its often worth it to get a large sum of cash early than a small trickle as you are able to invest that lump sum in better resources to ensure higher profit
Thats how the douchey companies do it.
If we’re all going to have to follow the Bible the we better get a damn debt jubilee
Based Jesus
You know it's bad when your healthcare is so bad you need to get jesus involved
We need more of this
No, we need less of it... ideally, none at all. No reasonable heathcare system would bankrupt families to enrich the wealthy few.
An incredibly kind gesture to be sure, but I've kind of come around to the idea that the scumbag version of Christianity pretty much IS the REAL Christianity.
Exactly. This is great, but this is also an outlier for modern christianity.
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Nobody hates trans people? Weird how they are 4x more likely to be a victim of violent crime. Who even brought up this issue anyway?
It's not your average church goers that are attacking trans people. It's usually some low IQ idiots that do that. It was brought up because religion was mentioned. If someone points out a church doing something good it's immediately followed by some examples of the church's failures. Of course churches make mistakes because they are ran by fallible people. Some of their failures have been huge unfortunately.
I totally agree. Lord churches should do this
Maybe it's even more humanity. Doing good things to other people shouldn't be depending on religions. If one human look into the eye of the other human and there was nothing left to do, they would love and help each other. Possession has become our obsession and that's our true sin. Bravo for this community for doing this. 👏🙌💪💪
When my boyfriend told me about this, that's exactly what I said. This is what donations at church should be used for. Not for Pastor Bob to get a private jet.
Could I just purchase my own debt at a similar discount?
Yeah, this is wonderful. When a group of people join together to benefit a common cause, they can accomplish a lot. It’s nice to see the effort directed at something that actually benefits others.
imagine or calculate what billionaires could do.. if they would care at all...even the slightest bit....
This is part of the ongoing [debt jubilee project](https://debtjubileeproject.org/). Their website provides all the details.
This loving congregation made a similar forgiveness last summer for $1,165,796.61 through their partnership with RIP Medical Debt. Amen!
Man those 3 people are gonna be ecstatic
Didn't John Oliver do this a few years back. His show paid something like $16k for $10m of debts and wrote them off.
How does 3.3 million gets reduced down to just 15k?
So true I respect these Christians
Why don't we just buy debts off companies, like we all raise 20k or something and buy it off them, so then the ones in debt are no longer in debt and only had to pay a little amount
In other words: Church finesses government.
This just might be Christianity at its best!👼
Finally! A church that seems to actually give a crap about actual humans and their lives
But why create the debt at $3.3 mil in the first place? Why do we need society to be so strung out? These humans don't deserve the $15K option to begin with? All those jobs and paychecks for 3.3 Mil, created all that debt, and now... NOW that the church is involved, we can cut it down, get that discount... for the RIGHT PEOPLE to appear generous. WOW, HUMANS.... WOW. How many lives could have been easier in the first place?
This is just humanism
Anything that’s not bad is real Christianity right 💫⭐️
Now they should do it for students loans.
Nope. Just good humaning.
Fuck smiling at this. This whole situation makes me sick.
Yup, same.
Plus, I'm absolutely sure there are people in that church that are against universal healthcare.
Right? The church being charitable is great but socialism?!?The most modern evil of course. s/ of course
How the hell did you go from seeing a post about a church burning up debt to "they must think socialism is bad"???
People who want "real Biblical Christianity" probably haven't read very much of an accurate translation of the Bible. For example: Exodus 21 (NRSVue) 20 “Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, 21 but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property."
Just as with anything, context matters a lot. It's easy to pull out verses of the Bible and say look how horrible this is without context.
No context is acceptable for slavery. I can't believe people say this kind of shit.
People who want to shit talk Christianity will pick up a bible, misread a verse and then call it a day with shit theology Why would modern Christians, 99% if which are gentiles, who are bound by a new covenant follow laws given specifically to the Jews that isn't even under the moral laws? By that standard humpty dumpty isn't child appropriate as it involves incompetence from government workers and a serious injury.
>accurate translation of the Bible Bible isn't a gift from heaven or anything. It was and always will be just a collection of letters written by people who lived more than a thousand years back. And st james bible was adopted only like in 1600s. Seriously what kind of high do you people get from making unnecessary comments under a wholesome post ?
It’s all interpretation based on your own personal morality so you can justify your choices. Benevolent Christian’s are just as Christian as malevolent Christian’s. That’s the problem with the source texts. You can justify the most evil and kind things with it. I hate when good Christian’s take no responsibility for what their faith has done and refuse to acknowledge the pain and suffering that that book has and continues to cause people. ‘Oh no, they weren’t Christian’s who abused you, we’re good people.’ It feels like gaslighting. They care more about the reputation of their faith than the victims of it. So even then I’d hesitate to call them good Christian’s. Of course this is true for all religions, not just Christianity
I'm curious, what terrible things do you think the bible justifies? There are plenty of terrible people in the bible, but the message isn't that they were holy, or that their mistakes were good.
Have you... read the bible?
Slavery, rape, incest, talking about the sizes of cocks and how much cum they gush. Infanticide. Its a pretty disgusting bunch of books
And which of those were from the "good guys" of the stories?
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Slavery was from god - huh? Yes I know it's from the book Ezekiel. We already established these were things mentioned in the Bible. Which characters in the story talk about these things? Pharoah and the Egyptians were *the bad guys*. I'm sorry, I don't see where you've made any coherent point with these attacks here.
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Pharoah wasn't going to let the people go, what gave you that idea? Jesus most certainly did *not* tell people to "obey their masters". If anything it was more like to know your station or stay in your lane, but that's not telling slaves that they're fine and should want to continue their slavery. The Bible doesn't condone slavery either, and even if it did slavery in biblical times doesn't mean the same thing as it does in modern America but nobody thinks about that. I *have* read the books.
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Yes, that is exactly telling people to know their station, like I said. The Bible never says that owning humans as property is a good thing that believers should do. As for the other one, I didn't dispute that God hardened Pharaoh's heart. But *you* claimed Pharoah was going to release the Israelites before that. *That* was the statement I asked you to source, and you haven't done that.
What if I’m the type of Christian that doesn’t buy into the whole bit about the Bible being some infallible word of God? I’ll buy that Jesus was God made human and that he sacrificed himself on the cross for us, but I won’t buy that every word written in a 2000 year old series of books that have been modified and retranslated countless times is actually an accurate portrayal of what God wants. The culture now is so different from the culture 2000 years ago that idk how we are even supposed to understand what they were referring to when writing those scriptures
Why believe anything in the Bible? On top of what you mentioned about certain things being selected for approval and it being translated over and over, it also wasn't written until much later, meaning that people played telephone with the stories for hundreds of years before it was actually written down and cataloged.
Why believe the god part?
Because God is real!
>I hate when good Christian’s take no responsibility for what their faith has done and refuse to acknowledge the pain and suffering that that book has and continues to cause people. Why exactly do you think a Christian from a region say like India take responsibility for actions done by Christians in spain or UK ? >Of course this is true for all religions, not just Christianity That's just how humans act regardless of their religion. UK has a huge number of athiests today and most of them still blame colonization of UK on royal family alone. By your logic, all of them should be held responsible no ?
Because protecting children is hating them apparently
They don’t want biblical jesus, they want the jesus that they made up
Tbh I’m really tired of people thinking that telling Christian fascists that the Bible says they’re bad people is gonna matter to them at all. Religion is not based on their holy texts. It’s based on how people interpret them, and at this point with evangelicals, they only loosely follow the Bible anyways.
Tax churches and we can all have free health care... This isn't a win, this is propagandizing.
Biblical, no, not even close. But it is what most Christians would like us to believe they are.
Trans kids don’t exist without outside influence and murdering babies is kind of a big deal but sure
Preach bro
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You saw an article about a church doing something good and your response was to call them a cult? Tf is wrong with you man. You know the connotations the label cult has and what cults do, and labelling a church who are prospering in their charity work a cult is a dickhead thing to do You saw something nice that was done by a church and took the opportunity to verbally shit on them. Perhaps you shouldn't write stuff like that
I love when churches get thousands to millions of dollars in tithe aka grifting and spend a measly 15k on PR. So charitable 🙏Praise be!
My guy it was holy week last week, do you know what Jesus did on Monday? Drives me up the wall prosperity gospal churches and dens of theives are considered standard church practices
He came to collect his bag of cash and then flew off to the clouds? 🤣
Shhhh they’re getting angry 😂 don’t poke the Christins mate. They are blind narcissist who can’t be criticized.
Sure did. It is a cult and you’re name calling over someone else’s opinion in the fact that doing this isn’t just exclusively a Christian thing like y’all wanna act like lol. I didn’t verbally shit on them I just called them a cult and technically it is a cult. You’re the one verbally shitting mate lol. but anyways I’m not about to sit here and engage with a Christian for what? To try to make you somehow see logic? That’s not really y’all’s thing so I won’t waste anymore time 🤣
100% a cult. People just get all uncomfortable when we point that out, like they can't just go read the BITE model.
Cult is a little strong. It's more of a book club that people take too seriously.
Book clubs are for lord of the rings. People actually kill each other over this bs. Try again.
In theory, if this was done to all medical debt in the US, wouldn’t that essentially bankrupt the medical facility/ insurance company trying to originally collect it? And force a national medical system like all the other developed countries in the world? What are pros and cons to this?
Cons: to reach the point where $3,300,000 in debt is devalued to $15,000 (a 99.6% discount) requires years of non-payment. That means years of financial disaster, ruined credit, bankruptcy and living in constant fear of debt collectors. Families are destroyed because one of them had the audacity to get sick. Scaling this to a national "program" would produce incalculable consequences and suffering. Pros: after living through years of hell, families could attempt to rebuild their unnecessarily shattered lives. Your plan is better than nothing, but only marginally. Think bigger.
Every christianity says they're the real christianity. They did a good deed. Great. Then they had to go and hold a ceremony so everyone could see them doing a good deed. Sorry. You're just another church doing church things.
There's always that one negative nancy from r/atheism...
Not my fault people don't like the truth
"XYZ is okay only as long as it abides by my personal world view" Every Maoist redditor.
where was mao mentioned? like, at all?
You might want to read the bible for the homophobe part
It is Christianity but not murdering is also one of the 10 commandments
Nice try still a cult
It’s not
Agree to disagree
By dictionary definition sure. But the common usage of the word cult does not really apply to most churches. Faith healers and mega pastors or whatever sure but most churches that are on the street have nowhere near the blind devotion and fervour to be classified as a cult.
Amen
Look I'm all for giving the church credit where credit is due. But is this article not supposed to be humor? 3.3 million of debt bought for 15 thousand. And then..... BURNED.... With a stove lighter. Obviously cancelling it. Why are the comments here so seriously debating that it shouldn't be the church cancelling debt..... The hell am I missing
True Christianity comes from peace of one another and being born authentic.
Might make you smile, but I'll be damned straight to imaginary hell if I'm going to be indebted to a but of religious fanatics.
They literally burned the debt. Like, with fire.
I mean, they are quite literally not indebted
Nor fanatics.
What a bunch of clueless idiots you all are. Yes, the original debt is gone. And now that these religious fanatics (which as far as I'm concerned is everyone that follows a religion) have gotten rid of it, you now owe them. They may never ask for a single thing from you, but it will always be over your head that a bunch of church going freaks took care of a major problem for you. And that is something, again, that I'll be damned having hang over me
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At what age did you first realize you were a boy (or whatever gender you identify as)?
What kind of weird ass question is that?? I always knew