New York City announced on Monday that it will spend $18 million over three years to wipe out more than $2 billion in medical debt, affecting around half a million New Yorkers. The city will coordinate with RIP Medical Debt, a nonprofit that buys up medical debt at a fraction of the cost. The nonprofit targets the debt of people with low incomes and financial hardships, and as of April 2023, it has reportedly relieved more than $8.5 billion of debt for over 5 million Americans” over the last 10 years.
New York City isn’t the first local government to team up with RIP Medical Debt. In 2022, Cook County, Illinois, which includes Chicago, became the first to team up with the organization, approving $12 million of federal pandemic rescue funds to relieve $1 billion of medical debt for its residents. Since then, local governments in Ohio, New Orleans, Michigan, and Washington, D.C., have followed suit.
