A Mammoth Hospital radiology technician lines up an x-ray machine to take images on March 15, 2024, in Mammoth Lakes, California.Los Angeles County supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to buy up and forgive millions of dollars in medical debt as part of ato enter into a pilot program with Undue Medical Debt, previously known as RIP Medical Debt, a national organization that relieves patients of what they owe by purchasing their medical debt for pennies on the dollar then retiring it.
Los Angeles County is part of a growing wave of local governments addressing medical debt. Cook County, home to Chicago, invested $12 million with Undue Medical Debt in 2022 to erase $1 billion in debt for its residents. In March, Arizona announced it would commit “We don’t want to ever deny that relief, but we really need to focus on preventing medical debt from happening in the first place,” Shah said. “Otherwise, it just ends up being this vicious cycle where you’re relieved, and then the next day you can be back in the same situation again.”
Sesso thinks most of these patients would likely have been eligible for hospital financial aid in the first place. However, many patients don’t know these programs exist or are put off by cumbersome approval processes.