An estimated $72 million in medical debt is set to be relieved for New Hampshire residents.
Undue Medical Debt, a New York based nonprofit, recently paid off over $30 billion in national debt from the former debt collection agency Pendrick Capital Partners. A small portion of the debt being retired affects Granite Staters.
Daniel Lempert, a spokesperson for the nonprofit, says this sort of large pay off is unique. The company typically sources from providers like hospitals and physicians groups that may have smaller amounts of debt they are seeking to collect on. Pendrick Capital Partners approached Undue Medical Debt and Lempert says the scale of debt prompted their action.
“We couldn't pass up the opportunity to get these debts off of credit scores, and payment plans and generally just remove such a large amount of medical debt off the shoulders of families across the country,” Lempert said.
The majority of the debt pay off will go to larger states like Texas and Florida. Lempert said it’s also typical for states that did not expand Medicaid to have the highest medical debt.
Lempert said it’ll take one to two years before any letters of relief roll out to borrowers. He said they’re looking to focus on retiring debt for people who make less than 400% of the federal poverty level; for a single person, that’s anyone making close to $62,000 a year. The group is also looking at removing debt that is 5% or more of a person’s annual income.
“That relief is not a silver bullet,” Lempert said. “We think it's really important to meet people in the moment. Over 100 million people are struggling with medical debt to the tune of far above $220 billion, is the estimate from the Kaiser Family Foundation, so I think it's really important to get this off of people's backs.”
