The American Medical Debt Crisis

In March, the actions of a local church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina received national attention for all the right reasons. The congregation at Trinity Moravian Church partnered with an organization called R-I-P Medical Debt to cancel 3,000 local residents’ medical debt, to the tune of $3.3 million dollars. They bought that debt for just a little over $15,000 dollars. 

Rev. John Jackman, the pastor of Trinity Moravian Church held a symbolic “debt burning” ceremony to mark the occasion, with confetti and hymns. 

In 2016, John Oliver, a comedian and host of the HBO series Last Week Tonight, purchased $15 million dollars in medical debt from 9,000 people, that he bought for “less than half a cent on a dollar.”

And some state officials, like Governor Ned Lamont of Connecticut, are currently proposing using federal pandemic aid to cancel billions of dollars in medical debt.

Yes, these are happy stories of people working together to help their community members, neighbors, and even strangers. 

But this is also a crisis. Millions of Americans carry the burden of outstanding medical debt – An investigation in 2022 by Kaiser Health News and the Kaiser Family Foundation, found that 100 million people across the nation have some type of health care debt. Kaiser estimated that in 2019 –  the total medical debt in the country was around $195 BILLION dollars.

For more on this we spoke with Emily Stewart, Executive Director at Community Catalyst, a national nonprofit focused on health justice.