Conservative values and debt responsibility collide into the nation's "broken" health care system, which charges insurance companies hundreds of dollars for over-the-counter medications that should cost substantially less.
It's a practice that unfairly targets the poor and disadvantaged, a former federal judge who recently helped pay off $4.3 million in medical debt of almost 3,000 people in 33 Georgia counties, told Mercer University's The Den.
"I believe in personal financial responsibility and have told a lot of lawyers it is a choice to manage their lives well fiscally," William Duffey Jr., retired from the U.S. District Court bench in Georgia's Northern District and former partner at King & Spalding in Atlanta, told The Den. "But it is seldom a choice to incur medical debt. When you’re sick, have an accident or suffer from disease, you have to get care. So it's an involuntary imposition of a debt on someone. That debt imposes a particularly harsh barrier for the poor."
It was Duffey who conceived of the Mercer Family Cares Initiative to retire medical debt.
Prior to the initiative, Duffey did some research into medical billing practices and noted that insurance companies routinely pay, as an example, $500 for a medication that would cost about $40 over the counter. Duffey also noted at least one inflated itemized charge for a sterilized Sharpie that had been used in his own surgery.
The more Duffey researched, the more "broken" he understood the U.S. health care system to be, and he recognized the "needlessly confusing" and "undue and unreasonable expense on people, especially those living in poverty," The Den reported.
"I’ve always wondered how people navigate the system, especially those who didn’t have the patience, time or resources," Duffey said, according to The Den.
Duffey's research eventually him to the nonprofit RIP Medical Debt, founded about seven years ago by two former debt collections executives to channel donations into purchasing large blocks of discounted medical debt. RIP Medical Debt works to relieve medical debt with no tax consequences for recipients while providing tax benefits to donors. Since its founding, RIP Medical Debt has eradicated more than $4.5 trillion in medical debt.
RIP Medical Debt helped identify the debt in Georgia rural counties, and Mercer University announced this week the payoff of millions in medical debt by "three families with deep ties to Mercer." They wiped out an average of $1,524.46 in medical debt per person among 2,866 individual recipients.
The debt retirement also feeds into Mercer University School of Medicine's founding mission to serve the residents in rural Georgia. Medical School Dean Jean Sumner said that it is "an honor" for the school to be part of a "worthy and important" initiative.
"The Mercer Family Cares Initiative and those who support this effort may not fully comprehend the transformational impact this program will have on the lives of patients, access to care and the health of Georgians in need," Sumner told The Den. "Access to quality health care in rural communities is negatively impacted by a number of factors. None are more prohibitive than exorbitant price and needless bureaucracy that results in unwarranted cost of care. These factors contribute to insurmountable walls that interfere with patients’ ability to freely seek and receive quality care. This gracious and generous offer will save lives, prevent disease and change our state for the better."
