The Taos Medical Debt Relief Project will go on under new Holy Cross CEO

Although it is said that Americans have the finest medical system in the world, too often they find that after accessing the system — insured or uninsured — they are left with crippling, debilitating medical debt.

Sources for this article indicate that, for millions of Americans, paying off their medical debt would leave them so strapped they would no longer be able to afford food and housing. More financially secure Americans would no longer be able to save for their retirement or for their children’s education.

In 2019 alone, medical debt in the United States was $195 billion. That’s greater than the entire economy of Greece. About one in five of those debtors say they don’t expect to ever be able to pay it off.

The Affordable Care Act did expand insurance coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans. However, it did not restrict the proliferation of insurance plans that use very high deductibles to shift medical costs back onto patients. The average annual deductible last year for a single worker with job-based coverage was over $1,400. Family deductibles can reach as high as $10,000. Deductibles force customers to pay thousands of dollars out of their own pockets before their insurance coverage ever kicks in.

Those same sources also indicate that 16 percent of privately insured adults would need to use their credit cards to pay for an unexpected $400 medical expense. The high interest rates on those credit cards are then piled onto their already unaffordable medical bills. This has led to medical debt becoming the most common form of debt on consumer credit reports.

When medical providers report past-due medical bills to a credit bureau, the effects can be devastating. A debt study done by the Sycamore Institute revealed that if you don’t pay your bill within 180 days of that past-due report, your credit report will say “account in collections.” Even if you eventually pay off your debt, that account-in-collections report will reduce your credit score for seven years. That could impede you from securing a mortgage, a rental agreement, a car loan, reasonable insurance policy rates, even a job.

A yet more profound consequence for persons carrying unpaid medical debt is that “about one in seven people with debt said they’d been denied access to hospitals, doctors or other providers because of unpaid bills. An even greater share — about twothirds — have put off care they or a family member need because of debt.”

An Arizona father, who was himself denied medical care due to outstanding bills, has seen the medical debt crisis firsthand in his job of selling Medicare plans to seniors. “I’ve had old people crying on the phone with me,” he said. “It’s horrifying.”

Five years ago, in an effort to address the medical debt problem in Taos County, Pamela Shepherd, then pastor of Taos United Community Church, joined by the Reverends Ginna Bairby of First Presbyterian Church and Cheri Lyon of El Pueblito United Methodist Church, contacted the CEO of Holy Cross Medical Center to propose a new idea: The Taos Medical Debt Relief Project. This year, James Kiser, the new CEO of Holy Cross, has agreed to continue the project, which works as follows:• Uncollectible medical debt is purchased from Holy Cross Hospital at three cents on the dollar.• All monies donated by Taos County spiritual communities and by other caring Taos County organizations and individuals are collected and sent to Holy Cross by Nov. 20.• Holy Cross generates a random list of recipients who owe between $250 and $10,000.• A letter goes out informing all recipients that their medical debt to Holy Cross has been forgiven by their Taos County neighbors and specifies the spiritual communities, organizations and individuals who were this year’s donors.

Last year, twelve spiritual communities raised enough money to purchase and forgive 3,000 medical debt accounts at Holy Cross. The overall debt relief totaled $2.1 million. This year, we hope to raise even more money and forgive more debts, so please join us in this effort.

If you or your community would like to donate to the Taos County Medical Debt Relief Project, please send a check to Holy Cross Hospital, 1397 Weimer Rd., Taos, NM 87571 and write “Medical Debt Relief” in the memo line. Donations need to arrive by Nov. 20. Debt cancellation letters will be sent out mid-December. Thank you!