I’m Canadian. And I’m already sorry for asking an ignorant question.

I know you have to pay for hospital visits in the states. I know lower economic status can come with lower access to birth control and sex education. But then, how do they afford to give birth? Do people ever avoid hospital visits because they don’t feel like they can’t afford it?

Do hospitals put people on a payment plan? Is it possible to give birth and not pay if you don’t have the means? How does it work in the states?

How does it all work?

Again. Canadian. And sorry.

    • theyoyomaster@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      14
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      11 months ago

      The US version is a system that calculates the risk of loaning money vs being paid back. In order to be approved for a loan the credit score is used to evaluate whether or not it is likely to be paid back within the terms of the loan. As a result those with bad credit have trouble getting favorable terms for cars, housing and basically anything that can’t be purchased outright. Does it negatively affect people for things outside of their control and perpetuate cycles of poverty? Absolutely, but it is based in actual fiscal risk to calculate sustainable loan practices.

      China on the other hand took the US term of “credit” and abused the everloving shit out of it to punish people that the government dislikes. Did your cousin post a Xi Jinping Winnie the Pooh meme? Well too bad that you were shopping for a house, because your “credit” is no longer high enough to not be homeless. You should have thought of that before you were related to someone who disagreed with the government!

      Not being able to demonstrate to a bank that you are financially reliable enough to pay back a loan is unfortunate, but a rational reason for an unfavorable interest rate or denial of a loan. Making people ineligible for even renting an apartment that is within their financial means because the dictator in charge dislikes you is a completely different thing altogether.

    • AttackPanda@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      11 months ago

      It’s similar but only take into account financial and professional information. As I understand it, the Chinese version also covers your daily activities.

    • scarabic@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      11 months ago

      As the name hints, a credit score is used to rate the risk of making you a loan. It’s not some essential personal ID. It only comes into play if you are applying for credit and is a set of shared records that financial institutions and private companies use to decide if loaning you money is a good risk or not.

      Someone else said it’s used to decide if you can get a car and that’s not accurate. If you need to borrow money to buy a car, your credit history will be checked. It’s the loan, not the car.

      Is it crazy that lenders would want to know if you’ve walked away from your bills in the past? Making it sound like dystopian China is a gross exaggeration.

      Landlords want to know if you will be able to pay rent and they may ask to know what you earn, what’s in your bank account, and if you have insane debt. It’s not credit per se but they are entering into a financial agreement with you which you could default on, so it’s got many of the same characteristics. Don’t want to give all this information? Don’t. It’s not required by law. Not everyone demands it. Some may choose not to rent to you without it.

    • Dandroid@dandroid.app
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      11 months ago

      Not really. It just keeps track of how often you miss your credit card payments so creditors will know how high of a risk you are to lend money to. If affects if you can get loans and what interest rates you can get on loans. But if you just pay your loans/credit card bills, you’ll be fine.

    • Uranium3006@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      11 months ago

      yes, but in the classically American fashion we only care about money so much only the money stuff even goes into calculating it

      • xenspidey@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        11 months ago

        Well yeah, because it’s only used when talking about loaning money…