Christian Social Justice: Life-Changing Medical Debt Relief

Welcome to the fourth and final installment of my Christian Social Justice series! In case you’ve missed it, we’ve been exploring how churches can reform their mission work to meet the spiritual needs Millennials bring to the table.

In the past two weeks, we’ve looked at relevant, personal, and tangible approaches to natural disaster ministry and immigration justice. Today, we’re tackling medical debt relief in churches.

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Medical debt relief is not your grandmother’s church mission work. Debt in general is not a new problem. But in the last few decades, and especially in the last few years, it has been cropping up in new and more pernicious ways.

More and more, the news carries stories of debt-ridden Americans crippled by financial strain. And no generation more so than Millennials. What happened? And how is debt relief–specifically, medical debt relief–a social justice problem that churches can remedy?

How Did We Get Here?

A few things have taken place. First of all, student loan costs have ballooned. The price of college, adjusted for inflation, has grown 161% since 1987. Meanwhile, salaries have stagnated. As a result, there’s no longer such a thing as being able to fully work yourself through college.

Second, housing prices are on the rise. Especially for young people.

Take Marin County. When my parents married and bought their first house in the early 1990s, real estate was only slightly more expensive here than the national average. Now, over the last thirty years, their house has skyrocketed in value, far outpacing the rest of the country.

For my friends and me, the story will be very different. We grew up here, formed communities and attachments here. Many of us can’t imagine raising our kids anywhere else.

But real estate here is now shockingly expensive. The salary needed to buy the median-priced home is over $230,000 a year. And let me tell you, none of us are making that much.

Which means, after grad school, we’ll be lucky if we can afford to rent a studio apartment in the town where we grew up. And if we do rent that apartment, and pay for the groceries and gas prices that come along with the area, we’ll have very little money left over for anything else.

That’s not unique to the San Francisco Bay Area–it’s happening all over. As a result, even middle-class Millennials aren’t even trying to invest in a house–it’s simply too expensive. So we tend to spend our money on other things. Things that don’t build equity. And thus we often accrue further debt.

The Worst Kind of Debt

But there’s one more type of skyrocketing debt that hits the hardest—medical debt.

I have some personal experience with this. I was sick for about eighteen months in 2018 and 2019, at times needing constant care. I took two ambulance rides that weren’t really optional. Saw specialist after specialist. Wasn’t able to work. And on and on.

I was incredibly lucky. I had a family that could support me. I also had excellent insurance, which accepted my claims for everything. I didn’t have extended hospital stays, surgeries, or any of the most expensive kinds of medical needs. I got very, very lucky.

A few months later, the bills have started to come in. It’s been a tender time—I’m still recovering emotionally and physically. The stress of keeping on top of the bills and making endless calls to the health insurance company is exhausting.

And I’m lucky. We won’t go into debt.

I can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like for a healthy person—much less a sick or recovering one—to go through this process with the added strain of debt. Especially if that person is elderly. Or doesn’t have a support system.

I know that if I was in debt on top of everything else, it would absolutely hinder my recovery.

I’m one of the privileged ones. John Oliver did a piece in 2015 about medical debt and the people it affects. At the beginning, he points out that people go into this kind of debt “through no fault of their own.” This isn’t reckless spending. It’s spending to live.

Medical Debt Relief

Okay, so medical debt is a huge problem. But how can you actually help? And, more to the point, what does this have to do with church mission work?

What if I told you that churches could make a substantial dent? If I told you that, even with a limited budget, you could cheaply relieve hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars medical debt for hundreds or thousands of people in your community?

(Bear with me for a couple paragraphs of the nitty-gritty.)

Turns out, most debt is for sale. If you owe BlueShield $4,000, they can sell that debt to someone else. Usually, BlueShield would sell it to a debt buyer for a tiny fraction, like $50. Then, that debt buyer can try to collect on the full $4,000.

If the debt buyer is unsuccessful in their collection, they may sell to another buyer for an even smaller amount, like $5. That buyer can then call you up and try to collect on the full price. And on and on. And eventually, that $4,000 is on sale for pennies.

The thing is, if you buy up that debt, you’re not legally obligated to collect it. It’s all yours. If you choose, you can forgive it. Voilà. Medical debt relief made cheap.

That’s the premise behind RIP Medical Debt, an organization founded by former collectors to promote medical debt relief. Through their organization, you can cheaply buy people’s medical debt and forgive it. (If you want to know more, you can click here to find out the details of how their charity operates).

And that’s what some churches are now deciding to do. In Chicago, a church worked with RIP to buy $5 million in medical debt relief for nearly 6,000 families in Chicago’s South Side. 

The cost to the church? $38,000. Some of which they raised and some of which they donated themselves.

This is a spectacular opportunity for churches, especially ones with low operating budgets. It can be frustrating to see wealthy churches rolling out large-scale mission programs that reach tons of people when you can’t afford to make that same kind of community impact.

Here’s your chance. Reach out to RIP Medical Debt and ask them to work with you. In addition to allocating some of your own funds, you can raise some money. Knock on some doors and become known as the congregation raising money for medical debt relief that will reach some of the poorest families in your town.

In addition to being a wonderful opportunity to affect change, it’s a great way to redefine yourself as relevant in the community. Millennials care about debt, and with rising student loans, GenZ likely will, too. It’s an issue that hugely affects their lives, and it’s something we don’t want to affect others’. It’s timely and hugely tangible in terms of impact.

And, perhaps most importantly, it shows that you can accurately understand and address the needs of our time and culture.

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I hope you enjoyed my Christian social justice series. Leave a comment below and tell me what you think—and how your own congregation is pioneering justice for the 21st century.