It's a model developed by two former debt collectors, Craig Antico and Jerry Ashton, who built their careers chasing down patients who couldn't afford their bills. Depending on the hospital, these programs cut costs for patients who earn as much as two to three times the federal poverty level. After helping Occupy Wall Street activists buy debt for a few years, Antico and Ashton launched RIP Medical Debt in 2014. Linkle uses her body to pay her debt free. The "pandemic has made it simply much more difficult for people running up incredible medical bills that aren't covered, " Branscome says. She had panic attacks, including "pain that shoots up the left side of your body and makes you feel like you're about to have an aneurysm and you're going to pass out, " she recalls.
"We wanted to eliminate at least one stressor of avoidance to get people in the doors to get the care that they need, " says Dawn Casavant, chief of philanthropy at Heywood. Most hospitals in the country are nonprofit and in exchange for that tax status are required to offer community benefit programs, including what's often called "charity care. " "As a bill collector collecting millions of dollars in medical-associated bills in my career, now all of a sudden I'm reformed: I'm a predatory giver, " Ashton said in a video by Freethink, a new media journalism site. That money enabled RIP to hire staff and develop software to comb through databases and identify targeted debt faster. A surge in recent donations — from college students to philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, who gave $50 million in late 2020 — is fueling RIP's expansion. Logan's newfound freedom from medical debt is reviving a long-dormant dream to sing on stage. To date, RIP has purchased $6. Then a few months ago — nearly 13 years after her daughter's birth and many anxiety attacks later — Logan received some bright yellow envelopes in the mail. Linkle uses her body to pay her debt to improve. Then, a few months ago, she discovered a nonprofit had paid off her debt. Soon after giving birth to a daughter two months premature, Terri Logan received a bill from the hospital. Its novel approach involves buying bundles of delinquent hospital bills — debts incurred by low-income patients like Logan — and then simply erasing the obligation to repay them. Nor did Logan realize help existed for people like her, people with jobs and health insurance but who earn just enough money not to qualify for support like food stamps. RIP buys the debts just like any other collection company would — except instead of trying to profit, they send out notices to consumers saying that their debt has been cleared.
Plus, she says, "it's likely that that debt would not have been collected anyway. Yet RIP is expanding the pool of those eligible for relief. The debt shadowed her, darkening her spirits. Sesso says it just depends on which hospitals' debts are available for purchase. Eventually, they realized they were in a unique position to help people and switched gears from debt collection to philanthropy. "We prefer the hospitals reduce the need for our work at the back end, " she says.
Juan Diego Reyes for KHN and NPR. Policy change is slow. And about 1 in 5 with any amount of debt say they don't expect to ever pay it off. Ultimately, that's a far better outcome, she says. She was a single mom who knew she had no way to pay. What triggered the change of heart for Ashton was meeting activists from the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011 who talked to him about how to help relieve Americans' debt burden. "Basically: Don't reward bad behavior. "The weight of all of that medical debt — oh man, it was tough, " Logan says. RIP bestows its blessings randomly.
"So nobody can come to us, raise their hand, and say, 'I'd like you to relieve my debt, '" she says. Rukavina says state laws should force hospitals to make better use of their financial assistance programs to help patients. Logan, who was a high school math teacher in Georgia, shoved it aside and ignored subsequent bills. For Terri Logan, the former math teacher, her outstanding medical bills added to a host of other pressures in her life, which then turned into debilitating anxiety and depression.