A loophole lets SC hospitals take millions from residents' tax refunds for unpaid bills
South Carolina hospitals are using a loophole in state law to scoop millions of dollars a year from the pockets of the poorest of patients. It mostly takes place outside the courts and the public eye.
A law originally written to help state and local governments collect debts is being used to seize tax refunds from people with past-due medical bills. The S.C. Department of Revenue does the legwork, and the cash flows straight into the coffers of some of the region’s largest health care companies.
The payoff is huge.
Together, health organizations took at least $92.9 million in more than 172,000 seizures to pay off past-due medical bills in 2017. The state and a private lobbying group for South Carolina’s counties make millions more helping hospitals collect these debts from people’s tax refunds. Patients foot the bill for that work, with as much as a $50 fee tacked onto their debt, giving both groups a boost.
These little-known mechanisms, the Setoff Debt Program and another that collects citizens’ wages, allows select hospitals to use the Revenue Department as their debt collector if it can show ties to state or county governments. Those ties, however, are often tenuous.
Read more: https://www.postandcourier.com/business/a-loophole-lets-sc-hospitals-take-millions-from-residents-tax/article_92a381a4-4b77-11e9-b439-ffe02586b0af.html
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