“`html
North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein (center), flanked by the state’s health secretary, Dr. Dev Sangvai (left) and an executive from Undue Medical Debt, Jose penabad, speaks about the elimination of medical debt through an initiative involving hospitals and Medicaid in Raleigh, N.C.
Gary D. Robertson/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
Gary D. Robertson/AP
After a routine trip to her mailbox, Dawn daly-Mack almost threw away an important letter that she thought was junk mail.
“I opened it up and it said, ‘Your medical bill has been paid,'” says Daly-Mack, 60, who lives in Gaston, in northeastern North carolina. “I didn’t beleive it.”
The letter turned out to be legitimate. Daly-Mack is one of about 2.5 million North Carolinians whose medical debt was erased under a new statewide agreement with hospitals. The hospital wiped away her $459 debt, dating back to a 2014 emergency room visit for a sinus infection.
“I was the only breadwinner in the family,” says Daly-mack, who was caring for her disabled husband and two teenagers at the time. “I was not able to pay the bill.”
North Carolina is offering $80 million in medical debt relief to nearly 83,000 families, and changing hospital billing practices to prevent future debt accumulation. The initiative,announced Tuesday,aims to ease a financial burden that disproportionately impacts lower-income residents.
All 99 hospitals in the state agreed to halt collection on certain debts from before 2014. More considerably, they’ve committed to automatically discount care for patients who meet financial assistance criteria – eliminating the need for applications. According to federal guidelines, a family of four earning less than $96,000 annually would qualify.
“I’m excited for the people of North Carolina,” says Allison Sesso, CEO of Undue Medical Debt, a charity focused on debt erasure. “It pairs not just medical debt relief going backwards, but it fixes the upstream problems.”
Hospitals collaborated with Sesso’s organization to pinpoint eligible individuals and notify them of the relief.
The issue resonated personally for Kody Kinsley,North Carolina’s former health secretary. ”My second year of college, my father had a massive stroke,” Kinsley recalls.He says his mother faced immense anxiety over the resulting medical bills.
