{"id":3719,"date":"2021-11-26T16:20:52","date_gmt":"2021-11-26T21:20:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=3719"},"modified":"2021-11-26T16:20:52","modified_gmt":"2021-11-26T21:20:52","slug":"its-our-right-to-be-ruined-by-personal-bankruptcy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=3719","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s Our Right to Be Ruined by Personal Bankruptcy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/JPA319.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"560\" height=\"414\" src=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/JPA319.jpg\" alt=\"It's Our Right to Be Ruined by Personal Bankruptcy\" class=\"wp-image-3720\" srcset=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/JPA319.jpg 560w, http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/JPA319-300x222.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 560px) 100vw, 560px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Thursday is normally deadline day for submitting my cartoon, but with Thanksgiving this week, the deadline was moved up a day or two. That always presents a challenge to pick a topic that I have some confidence will remain relevant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well for years now (decades, actually) I&#8217;ve drawn cartoons about the United States being the only developed nation in the world where medical debt is the primary cause of personal bankruptcy. So when I came across the story about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/coronavirus-live-updates\/2021\/11\/09\/1053889069\/singapore-medical-bills-covid-19-patients-unvaccinated-by-choice\">Singapore threatening punishment for those refusing the COVID-19 vaccine with medial debt<\/a>, I thought, &#8220;Perfect \u2014 this is a topic I\u00a0<strong>know<\/strong>\u00a0isn&#8217;t going to change any time soon.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And it seemed especially on-point with so many Michigan hospitals now at full capacity with unvaccinated patients. Yes, there is boatloads of federal money that supposedly will cover all covid-related costs, but it won&#8217;t. You know it, I know it. And if it did cover initial treatment costs, there are going to be so, so many with additional costs from the lingering effects. No way that&#8217;s gonna be covered. That&#8217;s just how messed up and needlessly expensive our healthcare system is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you want a good summary, you can check out the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Medical_debt\">Medical Debt article in Wikipedia<\/a>.\u00a0I know, it&#8217;s Wikipedia, but you can follow the many reputable citations from the Pew Research center, Kaiser Family Foundation, and others if you want to get to the details.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thursday is normally deadline day for submitting my cartoon, but with Thanksgiving this week, the deadline was moved up a day or two. That always presents a challenge to pick a topic that I have some confidence will remain relevant. Well for years now (decades, actually) I&#8217;ve drawn cartoons about the United States being the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,13,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial-cartoon","category-michiganpress-org","category-michiganradio-org"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3719"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3721,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3719\/revisions\/3721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}