NEWSMAX: An Occupy Wall Street spin-off group has bought up $14.7 million worth of Americans’ personal medical debt and forgiven it over the last year as part of its Rolling Jubilee project, the group announced Monday.
The Rolling Jubilee project, organized by Occupy Wall Street’s Strike Debt group, has so far spent $400,000 to buy the debt, in the process relieving 2,693 people of the money they owed for medical services Occupy thinks should be free…
The group receives almost no information about the people whose debt they buy – only an address, Ross said. The group mails a letter to each address explaining the project and that the person’s debt has been “canceled,” Ross said… (more)
EDITOR: The article points out that Rolling Jubilee is able to acquire $50 in debt for a dollar. Not only is this a service to those who owed the money, but it enables the lenders to immediately write off their losses for tax purposes rather than having to do so over a longer period of time.
That’s very nice, but medical debt on a credit report is frequently discounted anyway.
For our customers, medical debt is not held against their creditworthiness. Medical bills are onerous, complicated, and unfair. As a result, we only use credit information from other sources to determine a client’s ability and willingness to pay their bills.
Until the medical industry gets its house in order, some of us will deem their credit information as useless.