Bed-Stuy Church Helps Pay Off $4M Medical Bills Amid Coronavirus

BEDFORD-STUYVESANT, BROOKLYN — A Bed-Stuy church helped erase $4 million of medical debt for 4,500 people thanks to a pennies-on-the-dollar investment.

The Concord Baptist Church of Christ put forward $35,000 to RIP Medical Debt, a nonprofit that forgives medical debts, said the church's Rev. Gary V. Simpson.

RIP Medical Debt then used that money to buy a multi-million dollar portfolio of medical debts at a discount.

Together, the church and nonprofit helped wipe out medical debt for 4,500 people in Brooklyn and Newark, New Jersey, who next week should start receiving yellow envelopes in the mail telling them they're newly debt-free, Simpson said.

"This is not forgiveness of a debt, this is freedom from a debt," Simpson said.

The Concord Baptist Christfund has made annual donations to social causes from interest gathered on an initial $1 million seed in 1988.

Simpson said the church actually decided to focus on health care costs before the coronavirus pandemic.

The coronavirus crisis only reinforced why the church focused on medical debts — they can be a second trauma on top of coronavirus, or any ailment, itself, he said.

"This year we targeted on medical debt because we wanted show the need for affordable health care," he said.

Wiping out medical debt can be crushing for an individual, but there are ways for companies or — better yet — nonprofits to scoop it up at a discount.

RIP Medical Debt was famously featured on John Oliver's HBO show "Last Week Tonight" in a segment on debt buyers.

Medical debts are often bundled together in portfolios that sometimes-less-than-reputable companies can buy at discounts for their own profits, Oliver detailed. He set up a debt buying company himself, purchased $60,000 worth of medical debts and, instead of collecting on the money, gave it over to RIP Medical Debt.

And that's how Oliver was able to forgive $9 million in medical debt, as well as top Oprah Winfrey for the biggest television show giveaway.

The discounted debts RIP Medical Debt purchased on behalf of Concord Baptist came out to $1 donated to $114 of medical debt — $4 million in total.

That was about $1639.27 per Brooklyn recipient and $719.78 per New Jersey recipient, a release states. Simpson said shows the high cost of health care in New York City.

He hopes that the donation, among other things, helps pass along a touch of neighborliness between black church in Bedford-Stuyvesant and the world outside its neighborhood.

It's need now more than ever as the pandemic continues, he said.

"We may do it again," he said.

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