Tucson Church’s Easter Gift Will Pay Off $3.5M In Medical Debt

TUCSON, AZ — Easter, the most important of Christian holidays, is a time of forgiveness. That, says the rector at St. Philip’s in the Hills Episcopal Church, makes this gift especially appropriate and timely:

The church is offering a $35,000 gift to pay down Pima County residents’ medical debt. When leveraged, the money will help the church retire as much as $3.5 million in past-due medical bills, the Arizona Daily Star reported.

Christians gather at Easter to celebrate God’s forgiveness of sins through the death of Jesus Christ and his resurrection. One of Christ’s final acts during the crucifixion was to forgive a thief who was executed on the cross next to him.

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“Debt forgiveness — that’s sort of what the whole church is about,” the Rev. Robert Hendrickson told the Daily Star.

St. Philip's in the Hills is able to help Pima County residents drowning in medical debt by working with a national charity called RIP Medical Debt that will retire $100 in debt for every $1 raised. The New York-based charity already has retired more than $1.3 billion in delinquent medical bills nationwide, helping about 650,000 families through 152 campaigns in churches, synagogues and communities.

Every day, 79,000 Americans “choose between paying their medical bills and basic needs like food and shelter,” the charity says on its website, noting that about 66 percent of all bankruptcies and 25 percent of all credit card debt in the United States are tied to the $1 trillion in unpayable medical debt in the United States.

“Everyone knows someone who has this situation,” Hendrickson told the Daily Star. “It’s not debt because you made a bad decision. You didn’t go to the casino and blow all your money. You got sick.”

RIP Medical Debt was started in 2014 by Craig Antico and Jerry Ashton, two former collection agency executives who decided to use their expertise to forgive medical debt rather than hounding people to pay it.

They use donations like the one from St. Philip’s in the Hills to buy large bundles of medical debt, then forgive it with no tax consequences to the donors or the recipients. The two men took over when Occupy Wall Street, which was trying to raise $50,000 to buy people’s debt, stopped accepting donations on the website.

“We said, 'Wow, it looked like they were doing a tremendous job. Looked like they abolished over $30 million of debt, whether it was medical and student loans,' ” Antico told National Public Radio affiliate WBUR. “But that left us saying, 'Hey, we're the only ones that really could decide to go and abolish medical debt. Why don't we go do it? We can't let this just die.' ”aid

The sole goal of RIP Medical Debt “is to see that that debt is taken off the backs of our fellow Americans,” Antico said.

“Our only goal is to see that if there's a credit mark against them for that medical debt, that that is taken off their credit report,” he said. “Our only goal is to see that that debt disappears.”

Hendrickson’s church raised the $35,000 in just over two months through about 100 donations ranging in size from $20 to $3,000. Those who gave money won’t know who they helped under RIP Medical Debt confidentiality rules — something the rector appreciates about the charity — but will have the satisfaction of knowing they helped someone, he told The Daily Star.

» Read the full story on the Arizona Daily Star.