Medical Credit Cards -- Future $150 Billion Industry Preys on Need for Easy Money

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



Progressive Populist / By Joan Retsinas

Medical Credit Cards -- Future $150 Billion Industry Preys on Need for Easy Money
Do you want to have perfect teeth? Just sign on the dotted line. The terms sound generous: no down payment, 60 months of easy payments. But the interest will bite.

December 28, 2010 |


In Ulysses’ time, the sirens sang hauntingly beautiful songs to lure sailors to their doom. Today we have fiscal sirens. They don’t sing. They simply flash squares of plastic in front of hapless victims, thereby drowning them in red ink.

What is your heart’s desire? What do you need? What do you want? Over the past few decades lenders have blurred those lines: we grew to crave not just what we needed, but what we wanted, and if our hearts’ desires cost more than our dreary budgets, no matter. A lender would extend a plastic card.

Of course, the past twelve months have silenced a lot of those lenders. No more easy mortgages, even easier home equity loans, fewer ubiquitous credit card offers.

But a new siren has risen, proving that P.T. Barnum was right. We seem to be a nation of suckers, easily gullible marks for the latest legal siren: medical credit cards.

The cards are not aimed primarily at those expenses that insurers cover, but at discretionary expenses, like teeth whitening, cosmetic surgery, lasik surgery, weight-loss programs. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/health/149346/medical_credit_cards_--_future_%24150_billion_industry_preys_on_need_for_easy_money/

[DCKit]

1. But everyone know that if you're pretty with great teeth, you'll make more $$$$

And if you can't find a real job in this economy, there's always prostitution.