The Other Health Care Story
How 14 million dollars of debt was abolished.
We all know that the ACA has run into its problems after it went live at the beginning of last month. The website was a mess and more people were getting kicked off their (crappy) insurance plans than it was made to seem would.
Now I don’t plan on getting into an argument about whether or not the ACA is doing a good job. What I do know is that the old system of medical insurance caused people to go into debt. Whether it was a routine checkup or chemotherapy, taking care of yourself costs money, and lots of it. This is one of the many problems that the ACA has tried to solve, making routine checkups covered and not allowing insurance companies to kick you off if you get sick.
But there’s an underreported story happening in this country. As of yesterday, 11/11/13, Strike Debt in a program known as the Rolling Jubilee has abolished 13.5 million dollars in medical debt.
For those unfamiliar with Strike Debt, it is an offshoot of everyone’s favorite public camping campaign, Occupy Wall Street. And it is aimed at abolishing Debt the old fashioned way; by paying it off.
Now this idea may not sound revolutionary, especially coming from the group that basically took a piece of New York hostage, but it’s actually brilliant. Instead of paying off the capital of the debt, what they do is buy the debt. For those familiar with debt (as I’m sure many of us are), we know that sometimes if you fall behind on payments a collection agency will offer you a lower payment if you would just pay it off. And that’s because these collection agencies buy the debt from the banks at pennies on the dollar.
What Strike Debt does is pays the price that the collection agency would pay, and instead of trying to take advantage of humans, they simply abolish the debt. Poof! No more debt.
As per their email that was sent out to supporters this morning, they have spent approximately $600,000 on $14.7 million in debt, of which $13.5 million is medical debt. That is like buying $24 worth of goods for $1. And it all comes from donations.
But here’s my problem:
Where in the world do you hear about Strike Debt?
The New York Times posted an article a year ago (almost to the day) when Strike Debt first became a real thing, but hasn’t in the year since, even after the first reports that it was abolishing debt by the millions.
Now where is that coverage?
Maybe I’m just a bit too early, and all the reports will start coming in later, or they’re being filed as I’m writing this, but the only story I see is from the Guardian. No American paper or news site has covered the story so far.
And why? Shouldn’t the same places that are championing the ACA be championing this effort? Why aren’t we helping them raise more money so that American’s can start putting money into the economy rather than towards debt? Why can’t we do this for student debt?
Hopefully someone gets the word out (I know I’m trying). But in the meantime, here is the link to get involved if you want to: http://strikedebt.org
And please recommend this story to spread the word!
