For some families a mountain of medical debt may feel like something they can’t get control of and will never be able to pay off.
First United Methodist Church started a “Burning the Burden” mission to help those families erase their debts through a partnership with the non-profit RIP Medical Debt.
According to the church website the campaign was launched “with the goal of spreading out from our community like wildfire to help as many families as we can. Medical debt can have a debilitating impact, and we want to burn this burden for struggling individuals and families.”
Senior Pastor David Beam said his wife saw an article about RIP Medical Debt a couple of years ago and told him, “This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”
RIP is a non-profit that buys large portfolios of medical debt and uses donations, such as those coming in from FUMC, to help eliminate the debt. For every $100 donated, $10,000 in debt is erased.
Beam began researching the organization. “I’m always a little leery of something that sounds too good to be true,” he said. “But it was real.”
HBO’s “Last Week Tonight” host John Oliver helped shine light on what RIP does during an episode in 2016. During the show’s investigation, Oliver demonstrated how easy it is for someone or a business to buy medical debt and then aggressively begin trying to collect it.
Beam said hospitals try to get rid of patients’ unpaid bills as quickly as possible and turn them over to collection agencies.
During the “Last Week Tonight” segment Oliver showed how he paid $50 to register a debt-buying company in Mississippi then purchased for $60,000 a medical debt portfolio in Texas worth more than $14.9 million. But rather than trying to collect on the debt as a company would do, he worked with RIP to abolish the $15 million in debt for around 9,000 people.
According to RIP Medical Debt, the organization abolishes debt for individuals who:
• earn less than two times the federal poverty level
• have accumulated debt that is 5% or more of annual income
• are facing insolvency – their debts are greater than their assets
RIP shares an example of a couple whose twins were born three months prematurely and had to spend 11 days in the neonatal intensive care unit. The husband had been laid off from his construction job, and they no longer had health insurance. Over the years the medical bills for the twins’ care grew to more than $600,000. Through a church campaign similar to the FUMC one, the couple had $120,000 in debt paid off.
Beam said he mentioned RIP Medical Debt a couple of years ago in a sermon, and the Faith in Action and Missions Beyond groups at the church decided to make it one of their projects. “It was just the exponential effect that grabbed all of us,” he said. “It’s kind of cool to make that kind of difference in someone’s life and to relieve that kind of burden for someone who might not ever be able to pay that off.”
The church did not set a top goal, but when they started the campaign, the missions groups agreed to match up to $5,000 raised. “We reached that in the first week,” Beam said.
The church is continuing to collect donations through July 11 and as of last week had raised more than $14,000. If they can reach $20,000, approximately $2 million in medical debt will be erased.
“We’re going to see just how much we can raise,” Beam said. The project has been so successful, they may do another campaign and partner with other local churches and organizations.
The funds donated cannot be directed to a specific family, but the money will be used to help families in North Carolina, Northeast Georgia and East Tennessee.
“We are going to see how many people’s lives we can affect in the ripple effect going outside Franklin,” Beam said.
He said the families whose debt has been erased will receive a letter in the mail telling them their debt has been forgiven by the grace of God and the First United Methodist Church of Franklin.
Anyone wanting to donate, can contact FUMC at 828-524-3010 or donate online at ripmedicaldebt.org, click on the button for North Carolina, Northeast Georgia, East Tennessee to designate the donation for the FUMC campaign.