Mulberry Street UMC partners with nonprofit to abolish more than $1M in medical debt

Mulberry Street United Methodist Church recently partnered with the nonprofit RIP Medical Debt to clear over $1 million in medical debt for Middle and South Georgia families.

The nonprofit, founded by two former debt collectors, has been ridding former patients of their outstanding medical debt since its inception in 2014. It boasts that for every $1 donated, roughly $100 of medical debt is “abolished” for an individual.

Hospitals, like banks, loan money or services to people with the intent of collecting that money in the long run. However, many people — about 1 in 3 in the United States, according to RIP Medical Debt — have medical debt that they cannot easily pay.

Some hospitals will transfer this debt collection to other entities who pay pennies on the dollar so they can collect the debt instead of the hospital. This is where RIP Medical Debt steps in. They work with hospitals around the country to purchase debt before it can be bought by debt collectors.

The partnership between the church and RIP Medical Debt came at the same time of the church’s “stewardship campaign” during which members of the congregation “make financial pledges for the next year,” according to Associate Pastor Payton Stone.

Although this is not the first stewardship campaign the church has put on, Stone said that this campaign was the first of its kind for Mulberry Street UMC. The inspiration, he said, was partially due to their partner’s spotlight in national media, including on the late night talk show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and in an article from NPR.

The church sought to raise $12,000 in order to pay off roughly $1 million in debt from hospitals that are trying to offload it. By the end of the campaign, Stone said that Mulberry Methodist reached its “stretch goal” of $15,000.

The final figure that the church and RIP Medical Debt raised was almost $1.13 million. The average payout was $1,217.52 to each family, of which there were 927. In total, people in 90 Georgia counties had their medical debt cleared. Bibb county had 14 residents with cleared medical debt totaling a little more than $11,000.

In setting up the fundraiser, the church stipulated with RIP Medical Debt that they wanted to keep, as much as possible, the money within the confines of Middle and South Georgia. Stone defined that as roughly the area up to and south of the Fall Line, from Macon to Savannah and down.

Donations can be submitted at ripmedicaldebt.org/donate.

Gabriel Kopp is a sophomore student at Mercer University working with the Telegraph this semester.