>Another more than $200 million in medical debt has been wiped out for Arizonans.
>And the recipients are going to know who to thank: Gov. Katie Hobbs.
>The new figure was announced Monday by Allison Sasso. She’s the president and CEO of Undue Medical Debt, a company that agreed earlier this year to use some $10 million in state American Rescue Plan COVID relief dollars to buy up medical debt from hospitals and doctors for a few pennies on the dollar, eliminating a negative mark on the credit reports of those who racked up the bills.
>All totaled, according to the governor’s office, the program has so far erased $642 million owed by more than 485,000 Arizonans.
>And under a deal the state cut with Undue Medical, the beneficiaries all get letters crediting not just United Medical but also the governor.
Way to go, Katie Hobbs! Arizona is so lucky to have her as governor over Kari Lake. Katie actually cares about helping people. We need more governors like her to help alleviate the pressure of medical debt from people’s minds. This is a net positive all around.
tizor_rozit on
This is good, but the concept of buying discount medical debt from a doctor is so degrading to human dignity.
hypermodernvoid on
Oh please, Tim Walz, do this before the upcoming gubernatorial election and you’ll win by a landslide: even like half of Republicans are cool with universal (government funded/payment-administered) healthcare at this point, and surely excusing medical debt since tons of them have it. Hell, while some of the dumbest and most militantly MAGA are against student debt relief, even with kids who have significant amounts of it – plenty of Republicans actually agreed with that, too.
OldFort27 on
There goes the “radical left scum,” actually caring about people other than the rich.
sneakywombat87 on
Wow, erased $642M for $10M? That’s impressive. Well done.
No-Post4444 on
Waiting for Republicans to scream “Communism!!” and “Socialism!!” about this. Those people are deranged.
Tumble85 on
r/OrphanCrushingMachine
TotalEclipse19 on
Politician does something good for ordinary Americans. That’s a piece of news you won’t hear coming from Washington.
rockelscorcho on
Canceling medical debt? That sounds unAmerican. When did we start helping others?
Aargau on
To me, this shows how broken our current system is.
Back in the day before Obamacare, I founded a startup, and didn’t qualify for insurance.
OK, I’ll pay cash.
We talked to our local hospital and asked what the cost was a procedure. They said “we can’t tell you”.
“You can’t tell me? I’m paying cash, I want to know what the out the door cost is”
“We can’t tell you. We can only tell you afterwards…”
dogsandwhiskey on
Merry Christmas!! I’m so glad I read this today
Sminahin on
So I spent the last ~2 years with 100k in medical debt hanging like a guillotine over my family’s head. Picked it up because Anthem used every dirty trick under the sun to dodge paying for my husband’s lifesaving surgery. After hundreds of hours of effort and coordinating with my State Senator + Attorney General, we got it cancelled as of yesterday.
If you haven’t experienced this, you don’t know how it ruins your life. It feels like the health insurance cartels are swinging an axe at your loved one’s neck and you need to keep piles of money onhand to block the strike, buying you time to appeal. Because even if you’re contesting the payments, your payment plan could fire up any day with no notice. Not to mention that you got in this spot due to health problems that didn’t magically disappear, so you need to be ready to fund the next surgery too if necessary (we probably need 3 total) when you haven’t even settled payment for this one.
I haven’t vacationed in years. I haven’t been able to invest any of my money (need as much onhand as possible in case), so I got hit hard by inflation. I had to massively reduce funds going to my retirement. I had to move to a high-pay city with better medical care, and I haven’t bought a plane ticket to see my family in years–within my own country it feels like I’m a foreign worker sending remittances to a distant land, isolated from all my connections. I have had to make peace that rest of my life would likely be spent as a medical debt slave. A lifetime of having to take jobs I hate to make enough to stay ahead of just the interest on my debt, all the rewards for my work getting siphoned off to the debtowners. For years, I often haven’t been able to sleep because I can’t stop shaking in rage. And I’ve spent almost every day in fight or flight mode over it, constantly brawling insurance.
Now that we’ve “won”–victory here means just getting Anthem to do what we’re paying them for btw–it’s actually confusing. I keep mentally reaching for this thing and it’s not there. Like if you’ve gotten so used to glasses for decades and switch to contacts, and keep reaching to adjust your glasses reflexively. That’s the extent to which this constant fight for my family’s life has normalized itself in my everyday life and mental patterns.
Every single governor needs to do this. And we need to make this the new litmus test.
T_r_y2 on
Reading this as an American in a public hospital in Europe visiting someone in ICU. It’s so crazy how folks here don’t have to worry at all about the medical costs, even private hospitals are cheaper than the copays most folks have in USA. We need universal healthcare ASAP
Reiquaz on
Must be nice having a state that cares
prodigalpariah on
Awaiting republicans being furious about this
whoremongering on
DEMOCRAT Governor Katie Hobbs.
Hope to see more publicity when Dems do things like this to save average Americans from medical bankruptcy. And calling out republicans for opposing this. Repubs are good at splashing performative self-congratulations all over social media, when they achieve less than this.
encrypted-signals on
Wouldn’t be necessary if we had universal healthcare.
Ari_Cali_xoxo on
Actually , when one in five adults carries past-due medical balances, wiping the slate is economic stimulus with a human face and it didn’t even need a federal fight.
PossiblyATurd on
health insurance companies salivating over the prospect of putting 500k+ residents of Arizona back in to massive debt.
Remindmewhen1234 on
That’s what happens when you let the insurance companies write Healthcare legislation.
ChrisStanClan on
So it CAN BE DONE at the state level! Way to go Arizona, show us how it’s done!
Bulky-Bullfrog3707 on
Put Katie’s name all over the letter they send to make sure everyone knows who did this for them.
rysker6 on
MAGA is gonna be feeling some way with this news
GreyBeardEng on
Red State socialism
OzzieGrey on
Fuck yeah
A55W3CK3R9000 on
The fact that this even an issue is sooo fucked up OMG
manolid on
Waiting for the *That’s a slap in my face, I had to pay my own bill* crowd to chime in.
fy1sh on
Radical socialist caring about people. The horror!
mello-t on
/s woke mind virus! Nobody thinks of the billionaires!
PunisherElite on
How would one know if their debt is part of this?
PeaceandDogs on
Now do student loans or at least remove the interest!
endofworldandnobeer on
Go Arizona!
GNUGradyn on
That’s nice but can we fix the system that caused this in the first place so it doesn’t just happen again
Sparky-Man on
Nice, now if only they made it so this situation wasn’t a regular occurrence that needed intervention!
S_A_R_K on
I don’t live in AZ anymore but got a letter telling me that $500 of debt that I have no idea where it even came from had been cancelled. So glad Kari Lake didn’t win. Nice job AZ voters!
yusuf_mizrah on
I love when the left wing does things for people. It makes me want to vote for them.
I hate that being an anti-Zionist, which is just an avenue to focus on Jews and express prejudice (because it’s specifically deployed against us), has become a pillar of the left. It targets Jews and legitimizes violence against us, as can be seen since 2023. I really have nowhere to call political home, and can’t vote for them.
jeremyd9 on
Cancelling medical debt sounds like universal healthcare with extra steps.
AThousandBloodhounds on
This is good news but medical debt will continue to grow, especially now that the ACA has been systematically sabotaged into irrelevance by Trump Republicans and no longer can provide access to affordable healthcare as it was intended to do.
A single payer system, like Medicare, is more inevitable that ever.
40 Comments
>Another more than $200 million in medical debt has been wiped out for Arizonans.
>And the recipients are going to know who to thank: Gov. Katie Hobbs.
>The new figure was announced Monday by Allison Sasso. She’s the president and CEO of Undue Medical Debt, a company that agreed earlier this year to use some $10 million in state American Rescue Plan COVID relief dollars to buy up medical debt from hospitals and doctors for a few pennies on the dollar, eliminating a negative mark on the credit reports of those who racked up the bills.
>All totaled, according to the governor’s office, the program has so far erased $642 million owed by more than 485,000 Arizonans.
>And under a deal the state cut with Undue Medical, the beneficiaries all get letters crediting not just United Medical but also the governor.
Way to go, Katie Hobbs! Arizona is so lucky to have her as governor over Kari Lake. Katie actually cares about helping people. We need more governors like her to help alleviate the pressure of medical debt from people’s minds. This is a net positive all around.
This is good, but the concept of buying discount medical debt from a doctor is so degrading to human dignity.
Oh please, Tim Walz, do this before the upcoming gubernatorial election and you’ll win by a landslide: even like half of Republicans are cool with universal (government funded/payment-administered) healthcare at this point, and surely excusing medical debt since tons of them have it. Hell, while some of the dumbest and most militantly MAGA are against student debt relief, even with kids who have significant amounts of it – plenty of Republicans actually agreed with that, too.
There goes the “radical left scum,” actually caring about people other than the rich.
Wow, erased $642M for $10M? That’s impressive. Well done.
Waiting for Republicans to scream “Communism!!” and “Socialism!!” about this. Those people are deranged.
r/OrphanCrushingMachine
Politician does something good for ordinary Americans. That’s a piece of news you won’t hear coming from Washington.
Canceling medical debt? That sounds unAmerican. When did we start helping others?
To me, this shows how broken our current system is.
Back in the day before Obamacare, I founded a startup, and didn’t qualify for insurance.
OK, I’ll pay cash.
We talked to our local hospital and asked what the cost was a procedure. They said “we can’t tell you”.
“You can’t tell me? I’m paying cash, I want to know what the out the door cost is”
“We can’t tell you. We can only tell you afterwards…”
Merry Christmas!! I’m so glad I read this today
So I spent the last ~2 years with 100k in medical debt hanging like a guillotine over my family’s head. Picked it up because Anthem used every dirty trick under the sun to dodge paying for my husband’s lifesaving surgery. After hundreds of hours of effort and coordinating with my State Senator + Attorney General, we got it cancelled as of yesterday.
If you haven’t experienced this, you don’t know how it ruins your life. It feels like the health insurance cartels are swinging an axe at your loved one’s neck and you need to keep piles of money onhand to block the strike, buying you time to appeal. Because even if you’re contesting the payments, your payment plan could fire up any day with no notice. Not to mention that you got in this spot due to health problems that didn’t magically disappear, so you need to be ready to fund the next surgery too if necessary (we probably need 3 total) when you haven’t even settled payment for this one.
I haven’t vacationed in years. I haven’t been able to invest any of my money (need as much onhand as possible in case), so I got hit hard by inflation. I had to massively reduce funds going to my retirement. I had to move to a high-pay city with better medical care, and I haven’t bought a plane ticket to see my family in years–within my own country it feels like I’m a foreign worker sending remittances to a distant land, isolated from all my connections. I have had to make peace that rest of my life would likely be spent as a medical debt slave. A lifetime of having to take jobs I hate to make enough to stay ahead of just the interest on my debt, all the rewards for my work getting siphoned off to the debtowners. For years, I often haven’t been able to sleep because I can’t stop shaking in rage. And I’ve spent almost every day in fight or flight mode over it, constantly brawling insurance.
Now that we’ve “won”–victory here means just getting Anthem to do what we’re paying them for btw–it’s actually confusing. I keep mentally reaching for this thing and it’s not there. Like if you’ve gotten so used to glasses for decades and switch to contacts, and keep reaching to adjust your glasses reflexively. That’s the extent to which this constant fight for my family’s life has normalized itself in my everyday life and mental patterns.
Every single governor needs to do this. And we need to make this the new litmus test.
Reading this as an American in a public hospital in Europe visiting someone in ICU. It’s so crazy how folks here don’t have to worry at all about the medical costs, even private hospitals are cheaper than the copays most folks have in USA. We need universal healthcare ASAP
Must be nice having a state that cares
Awaiting republicans being furious about this
DEMOCRAT Governor Katie Hobbs.
Hope to see more publicity when Dems do things like this to save average Americans from medical bankruptcy. And calling out republicans for opposing this. Repubs are good at splashing performative self-congratulations all over social media, when they achieve less than this.
Wouldn’t be necessary if we had universal healthcare.
Actually , when one in five adults carries past-due medical balances, wiping the slate is economic stimulus with a human face and it didn’t even need a federal fight.
health insurance companies salivating over the prospect of putting 500k+ residents of Arizona back in to massive debt.
That’s what happens when you let the insurance companies write Healthcare legislation.
So it CAN BE DONE at the state level! Way to go Arizona, show us how it’s done!
Put Katie’s name all over the letter they send to make sure everyone knows who did this for them.
MAGA is gonna be feeling some way with this news
Red State socialism
Fuck yeah
The fact that this even an issue is sooo fucked up OMG
Waiting for the *That’s a slap in my face, I had to pay my own bill* crowd to chime in.
Radical socialist caring about people. The horror!
/s woke mind virus! Nobody thinks of the billionaires!
How would one know if their debt is part of this?
Now do student loans or at least remove the interest!
Go Arizona!
That’s nice but can we fix the system that caused this in the first place so it doesn’t just happen again
Nice, now if only they made it so this situation wasn’t a regular occurrence that needed intervention!
I don’t live in AZ anymore but got a letter telling me that $500 of debt that I have no idea where it even came from had been cancelled. So glad Kari Lake didn’t win. Nice job AZ voters!
I love when the left wing does things for people. It makes me want to vote for them.
I hate that being an anti-Zionist, which is just an avenue to focus on Jews and express prejudice (because it’s specifically deployed against us), has become a pillar of the left. It targets Jews and legitimizes violence against us, as can be seen since 2023. I really have nowhere to call political home, and can’t vote for them.
Cancelling medical debt sounds like universal healthcare with extra steps.
This is good news but medical debt will continue to grow, especially now that the ACA has been systematically sabotaged into irrelevance by Trump Republicans and no longer can provide access to affordable healthcare as it was intended to do.
A single payer system, like Medicare, is more inevitable that ever.
Wow that was easy.
Let’s go Arizona!! Very well done.