Donors pay off $10 million of medical debt in rural Central Appalachia - Entrepreneur Generations

Daily Yonder map; click the image to enlarge it.

A nonprofit organization called RIP Medical Debt has paid off $10 million in medical debt for more than 10,000 people in rural Appalachian counties of Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia. The donations will wipe out most of the currently reported medical debt in the region.

"The debt forgiveness was paid with donations from two families with ties to Central Appalachia: Jim and Sharen Branscome and Bill Bishop and Julie Ardery," Tim Marema reports for The Daily Yonder. "Jim Branscome is a native of Southwest Virginia. He and Sharen Branscome met when they both worked for the Appalachian Regional Commission in Washington, D.C. Bishop and Ardery are from Kentucky. Early in their careers, both Jim Branscome and Bishop worked for the Whitesburg Mountain Eagle, a renowned weekly newspaper in the Kentucky coalfields." Marema notes that both families have made donations to the Daily Yonder, and that Bishop and Ardery are the founding editors of the publication.

The donations total $100,000, but paid off much more debt because the organization purchased the debts for pennies on the dollar on the debt market. The Branscomes donated $80,000 of the funds, and Bishop and Ardery contributed $20,000, Marema reports.

RIP Medical Debt was founded in 2014 by debt collection industry veterans including Craig Antico. Medical providers and others sell debts at deep discounts in hopes of getting back a portion of what they're owed. "When RIP Medical Debt purchases the debt, instead of attempting to make collections, they forgive it. The organization sends notifications to the affected individuals and reports the erasure to credit bureaus, which improves credit scores," Marema reports.

About 300,000 people have had a combined debt of $800 million forgiven through the organization; the average person has $2,600 of debt forgiven. "Antico said the forgiveness can have special benefits for rural consumers, where there are fewer medical-care choices and those with insurance may be more likely to face out-of-network expenses," Marema reports. "Uninsured patients are another major source of medical debt. Medical debt contributes to 60% of all individual bankruptcies and can reduce access to healthcare, he said."

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2MeKEHS Donors pay off $10 million of medical debt in rural Central Appalachia - Entrepreneur Generations

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