Methodist is about the hustle, not health
It’s not particularly shocking that Memphis, a city where people’s needs are often bigger than their wallets, would be a target-rich environment for predators.
Predators — like the reverse mortgage lenders who targeted poor Africanamericans in North and South Memphis without telling them that paying for their dreams would cost them their homes.
Predators — like private-equity companies that own much of Memphis’ housing stock in its poorer neighborhoods and file for evictions at obscenely high rates.
Predators — like the 232 payday lenders in Shelby County who punish people with interest rates as high as 521 percent for the sin of having a light bill that’s more than their paycheck.
What is shocking, though, is that a hospital — especially one that is nonprofit and religion-affiliated — would create similar misery. But one does. In gut-wrenching detail Wendi C. Thomas, former Commercial Appeal columnist and now editor of the nonprofit journalism project MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, exposed how Methodist Lebonheur Healthcare not only pursued one poor patient, Carrie Barrett, as if she were the Unabomber, but that it even sent its own collection agency after her.
Barrett, who came to Methodist’s emergency room in 2007 for problems with shortness of breath and tightness in her chest and left with a $12,109 bill for a heart catheterization, doesn’t even recall being notified about the cost.
Yet in 2010 Barrett, who has never made more than $12 an hour, was sued by Methodist not only for that bill, but for attorney’s fees and costs, and interest.
She’s faced numerous paycheck garnishments — and the $33,000 that Barrett, 63, now owes is more than twice what she earned last year.
Methodist isn’t the only non-profit hospital which sues patients who don’t pay. A recent study by the Journal of the American Medical Association found more than 20,000 debt lawsuits filed by Virginia hospitals in 2017, along with more than 9,300 garnishment cases.
It also found that non-profit hospitals were more likely to garnish wages.
Other non-profits don’t sue
But while Methodist has filed more than 8,300 lawsuits for unpaid bills since 2014, it stands out in contrast to other Methodist-affiliated hospitals, according to Thomas and Propublica. In fact, some of its Methodist cousins, such as the seven-hospital Houston Methodist system, don’t sue patients.
Which suggests that Methodist may be able to find a way around lawsuits. But right now, that isn’t happening. Heck, it even sues its own, low-wage employees for unpaid medical bills!
Which almost puts Methodist in a category with even reverse-mortgage lenders and payday loan vultures.
Like them, they contribute to the destitution of people who have meager resources; people who won’t be able to afford food or rent if a garnishment eats up a quarter of their paycheck, or if it continues to pile on interest.
What Methodist says
For its part, Methodist states it works with people who struggle to pay their bills.
Among other things, in a statement sent to The Commercial Appeal, it defended its collection agency as an attempt to be more-patient centered and to create jobs. That wouldn’t happen, it maintains, if the service was outsourced.
It also maintains that the hospital turns to collections and the courts after numerous other attempts to collect payments have been exhausted.
“We are dedicated to strengthening the communities we serve and improving the well-being of patients and families, and that commitment is demonstrated through our actions,” the Methodist statement reads. “Our organization provides more healthcare community benefit than any other health system in the region – over $226 million annually.
“We work with all patients in need of financial assistance and our processes are consistent with those of other nonprofit healthcare providers.”
Nonetheless, intentionally or not, Methodist’s numerous court actions and garnishments reveal more contempt than compassion for people in a city where a quarter of the residents are poor.
And, sadly, that seems to be the way of things these days.
Tennessee is not doing enough for the poor
Tennessee lawmakers are seeking federal guidance on making poor people work for Tenncare benefits — something that could result in more than 68,000 parents being kicked off the rolls come next year. They act as if scores of jobs are available to people with debilitating conditions, along with transportation.
This state also stubbornly refuses to expand Medicaid — meaning it would rather give $1.4 billion back to the federal government than to help more Tennesseans afford to pay for health care.
On top of that, some lawmakers keep pursuing policies, such as drug testing for people receiving welfare benefits, that do more to demonize poverty than to cure it.
And even as these lawmakers devise new indignities for who they see as undeserving poor, they’ve not done enough to deal with those things that keep many of them poor. For example, payday lenders in Tennessee can charge as much as 460 percent interest.
They’re allowed to get away with that. So, it seems that Methodist is piling on to that mentality; one that, in vilifying poor people as moochers, has invariably turned them into marks.
They’re marks for lawmakers who believe they can punish poverty out of existence; lawmakers who stupidly see it as being about character and not economics. They’re marks for predatory lenders.
And if people like Barrett are marks for Methodist, a hospital that purports to be compassionate, imagine how difficult it is for poor Memphians to deal with institutions that make no such claims?
Tonyaa Weathersbee can be reached at tonyaa.weathersbee@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter: @tonyaajw.