A non-profit group, RIP Medical Debt, is hoping to erase greater than $800 million of medical debt owed by Michigan residents, for simply pennies on the greenback.

Scott Patton is the group’s vice chairman of improvement. He mentioned they purchase medical debt on the secondary debt market, identical to debt collectors do, or they purchase it straight from medical suppliers.

The group cancels the debt it has acquired, and sends sufferers proof that they now not owe the cash. Patton mentioned it is an enormous reduction to individuals — a lot of whom have been pushed into poverty, or deeper into poverty, by the debt. Medical debt can even improve dangers to individuals’s well being, he mentioned, as a result of they usually keep away from remedy for well being situations out of worry of falling deeper into debt.

Patton acknowledged that the campaigns his group organizes aren’t a everlasting resolution to the nation’s patchwork medical insurance system, which leaves loads of gaps for individuals to fall by means of, however he mentioned they assist hundreds of thousands of struggling Individuals whereas calling consideration to the urgent want for reform.

Patton says it is not simply individuals who lack medical insurance that have medical debt. Many individuals face debt as a consequence of medical insurance plans that require large deductibles, or plans that pay a lot lower than the total supplier’s invoice.

“We’re simply seeing, fairly frankly, increasingly more of the burden of cost is being shifted to the affected person.”

RIP Medical Debt says it focuses on canceling debt for individuals who earn lower than 4 occasions the federal poverty degree, or who’ve debt that’s 5% or extra of their annual revenue.

Patton mentioned, on common, “There is a 100-to-one return on funding right here. Each greenback invested will abolish $100 in medical debt for somebody in your state.”