Contact hospital CEOs in Forsyth County to sign on to Governor’s plan to eliminate medical debt!
Or you can scan this QR code with your phone:
On Tuesday, July 23, NC Governor Roy Cooper visited Trinity Moravian Church to learn more about the church’s efforts relieving medical debt through the Debt Jubilee Project. The visit included a roundtable discussion to better understand how recent actions to relieve medical debt could benefit millions of North Carolinians. Roundtable participants included Marisa Clemente, Vice President of Philanthropy at Undue Medical Debt, Jonathan Kappler, chief of staff for N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, and Jordan Montanez, an individual who has benefited from debt relief.
On July 1, Governor Cooper and NCDHHS Secretary Kody Kinsley announced new actions leveraging the state’s Medicaid program that will encourage hospitals to relieve a potential $4 billion in existing medical debt for approximately two million low and middle-income North Carolinians and ease the burden of medical debt in the future. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services signed off July 26 on DHHS’ plan to use the state’s Medicaid program to incentivize hospitals financially. Now NC hospital systems must be convinced to sign on the program – though they will be losing out on higher Medicaid payments if they do not.
The Rev. John Jackman explains how their Debt Jubilee Project works. Photo courtesy of Allison Lee Isley, Winston-Salem Journal.
The Rev. John Jackman, pastor of Trinity and organizer of the Debt Jubilee Project, said that the Governor’s plan was exactly the “carrot” that was neeeded to convince hospital systems to participate. He appealed to faith leaders across the state to educate their parishioners on the issue and encourage them to write hospital CEOs supporting the program. He also indicated that the Debt Jubilee Project will have a link making it easy for individuals to email the hospital CEOs in tehir region. This effort is also supported by the NC Justice Center, which is currently producing a documentary about the issue.
Jordan Montanez, an artist in Greensboro, told her story of an asthma attack and emergency room visit that ended up with a $12,900 bill – unpayable because her condition had caused her to lose her job. Working with DollarFor, she was able to get the bills eliminated — but along the lengthy journey the hospital’s decisions seemed to make no sense. Read Jordan’s story HERE.
Rev. Jackman said that many times, hospitals’ decisions to aggressively collect — or generously eliminate — medical bills are often opaque and arbitrary.
Click HERE to email hospital systems in Forsyth County (Atrium, Novant). Click HERE to email hospital systems statewide.
Hospitals that agree to the proposal will receive higher Medicaid payments than other hospitals. Participating hospitals would:
Patients of participating hospitals will not need to take any actions to benefit from medical debt relief.
Watch the entire Round Table on WXII-12.
Read the Winston-Salem Journal’s report of the Round Table.
Photos courtesy of Allison Lee Isley, Winston-Salem Journal.
The NC Justice Center is asking North Carolinians to urge Hospital CEOs to cooperate with Governor Cooper’s debt relief plan:
https://secure.everyaction.com/wWPZUtgqREyCb2dGQIk-Rg2
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina state government is seeking to rid potentially billions in medical debt from low- and middle-income residents by offering a financial carrot for hospitals to take unpaid bills off the books and to implement policies supporting future patients.
Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and his health chief unveiled a plan that they want federal Medicaid regulators to approve soon, It would allow roughly 100 hospitals that recently began receiving enhanced federal Medicaid reimbursement funds to get even more money.
Read the full article here:
You can help by contacting hospital CEOs and encouraging them to work with the plan:
NC JUSTICE CENTER: Urge Hospital CEOs to Cooperate with Plan to Reduce Medical Debt:
https://secure.everyaction.com/wWPZUtgqREyCb2dGQIk-Rg2
(Raleigh, N.C.) – North Carolina State Treasurer Dale R. Folwell, CPA, released a report that shows extreme variations in hospital prices, huge price markups from Medicare rates, and widespread failures in price transparency.
The report’s findings raise troubling questions about health care access and affordability, and North Carolina’s justice system. The report found massive disparities among hospital prices, and failures in price transparency that have crippled patients’ ability to protect their financial health. This is especially troubling given an earlier report found that North Carolina hospital systems sued 7,517 patients over medical debt, using the court system to charge interest on medical debt judgments and to place liens on family homes. When patients tried to fight back, they argued that they could not even tell whether they had been charged a fair price.
Read the full Report:
(Raleigh, N.C.) — State Treasurer Dale R. Folwell, CPA, and the State Health Plan released a new report today showing that the majority of North Carolina hospitals did not lose money on Medicare — they profited. The report found huge disparities between the Medicare losses claimed by hospital executives and the numbers that hospitals reported to the federal government. This raises serious concerns over hospitals’ commitment to their patients and their charitable mission, and the steep costs passed on to the nearly 740,000 members of the State Health Plan.
Hospital executives have justified their tax exemptions and their crushing price inflation by claiming to lose billions of dollars on Medicare patients. North Carolina hospital lobbyists claimed they lost $3.1 billion on Medicare in 2020 — the same year hospitals actually reaped a total of $87 million in Medicare profits. The questionable loss claim was 3,670% larger than hospitals’ self-reported Medicare profits.
“The hospital cartel is overcharging you because they can, not because they need to,” said Treasurer Folwell. “Hospital executives can’t keep hiding behind Medicare. They tried to claim huge losses to justify financially kneecapping their patients. But now we know that the majority of hospitals are actually profiting off Medicare.”
Read the full report:
(Raleigh, N.C.) — An analysis released by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the North Carolina State Health Plan revealed that the majority of North Carolina nonprofit hospitals are not fully honoring their charitable mission. Although nonprofit hospitals reap lucrative tax breaks in exchange for serving the poor, their charity care spending varies wildly and with little accountability. Researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found troubling disparities in North Carolina hospitals’ charity care spending.
Fewer than 25 hospitals exceeded the value of their tax exemption with the amount of their charity care spending in North Carolina. Our analysis suggests that North Carolina’s largest nonprofit hospital systems reaped tax breaks worth more than an estimated $1.8 billion in 2019-2020. Across the majority of these systems, charity care spending did not exceed 60% of the value of their tax breaks. On average, North Carolina hospitals were far more profitable than the national average. But one in five families in North Carolina has medical debt in collections.
“Charity care is the heart of what it means to be a nonprofit hospital,” NC State Treasurer Dale Folwell said. “Our hospital systems justify overcharging state employees and taxpayers by pointing to their charity care costs. But now we know that is not fully accurate. They are profiting on the backs of sick patients.”
Read the full report:
Our Summer 2024 Campaign initially targeted 14 counties west of Forsyth – in the “High Country.” Many of these counties are very challenged for health care. In July and August, we raised a total of $13,828.90, which included help from Fries Memorial Moravian Church and Moravia Moravian Church, and donations from many individuals. We specified that any “overflow” could be used in any other NC county. At the end, Undue Medical Debt was able to purchase a total of $3,817,084.95 in past-due medical debts owed by 2,544 NC households, spread across 75 on NC’s 100 counties.
The largest individual debt abolished was $5,844 in Stanly County – the smallest was $140 in Transylvania County. In all cases, the debts met Undue Medical Debt’s rigorous standards — the household earns 4x or below the federal poverty level or they have medical debt that is 5 percent or more of their total annual income. The vast majority of cases are closer to Federal Poverty Level.
RIP Medical Debt, the New York based nonprofit that the Debt Jubilee Project works with to purchase and forgive medical debt, has changed its name to “Undue Medical Debt” as par of its tenth anniversary.
“The rollout of our new name and brand represents an exciting moment in our organizational history,” shares Undue Medical Debt president and CEO, Allison Sesso. “These changes reflect how much we’ve grown and capture our bold vision for a future in which the causes of medical debt are undone, eliminating the need for us to make debts un-due. Our mission remains to end medical debt and be a source of justice in an unjust healthcare finance system, a unique solution for patient-centered healthcare providers and a moral force for systemic change so all people can seek healthcare without fear.”
Read more about it here:
NATIONAL NONPROFIT RIP MEDICAL DEBT ANNOUNCES EXCITING REBRAND TO UNDUE MEDICAL DEBT
Former US Surgeon General Jerome Adams, who served 2017-21 during the Trump presidency, had to go to the ER for simple dehydration, and later received a bill for $5,000. Business Insider reports that Adams was fighting the bill, which he called “mentally taxing.” His experience highlights big problems with US healthcare, including high costs and no transparency.
Read the article here:
Former US Surgeon General Says US Health Care System is Broken
