How To Abolish Unpayable Medical Debt – The Lone Star Iconoclast

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW with Co-Author Jerry Ashton

NEW YORK – End Medical Debt is the definitive and new 196-page book by Jerry Ashton, Robert Goff, and Craig Antico, founders of the national charity RIP Medical Debt, which has eliminated numerous instances of the medical debt that ruins families in America. RIP Medical Debt is a 501 (c) (3) charity that buys long-term and debilitating medical debt for about a penny on the dollar and then forgives it, releasing the torment that too many Americans face.

RIP (rest in peace) first came to America’s attention in 2016 when HBO’s “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” used the charity to abolish $15 million in medical debt. By the end of 2018, RIP will have abolished a half billion dollars in medical debt for 250,000 people in communities nationwide. Associated Press calls RIP End Medical Debt the “Secret Santas.”

The real national crisis for a growing number of Americans is healthcare debt. A person becomes ill and suddenly his life saving are destroyed, and oftentimes, even worse than that illness, he accumulates a debt load that will haunt him the rest of his life.

The founders of the non-profit and the authors of the book are industry insiders who wanted to bypass political posturing to look clearly and realistically at the actual causes and possible cures for more than $1 trillion in unpayable medical debt in America, a figure that is growing. They believe that medical debt causes hardships for individuals, families, communities, and the country. To enact a cure, they decided to take action, which prompted the publication of their book which tells the all-encompassing story of how the medical profession, with its offshoots like insurance companies and big pharma, have changed the landscape.

Jerry Ashton (Kevin Sturman photo)

In an interview with The Iconoclast, one of the authors, Jerry Ashton, explained the mission of the charity, how it works, and the importance of people reading the book End Medical Debt to become educated in what has happened and how it can be corrected. As a show of dedication to the cause, the authors are donating all royalties from the book toward paying off medical debt for individuals throughout the country. The sale of one book, they say, will eliminate $500 in medical debt.

According to Ashton, “The charity has as its sole mission that of accepting donations from people to go out to the debt market to locate and buy unpaid and unpayable medical debt, generally for about a penny on the dollar, and then once we get that debt in our possession we eliminate the credit report mark and then we forgive the debt so never again will that person be called by the bill collector.

“As far as getting out the word, one of the things we decided to do, the three people who started RIP Medical Debt, myself Jerry Ashton, Craig Antico, and Robert Goff, was to write a book because everything that we’ve learned, both in our careers as well as in this process of forgiving medical debt, has taught us that people don’t know enough about this disaster that we call the healthcare system and the roadkill that it creates in families’ lives – we had to get that down in print. So that’s what the book called End Medical Debt is all about.”

When The Iconoclast asked if everything is going as planned, Ashton said, “Look at RIP Medical Debt as a charity. In December we were finishing off our year. We had a pretty good year of donations, but it ended up spectacular. We had one anonymous donor family step up because they wanted to bring attention to the inequities of the healthcare system and get it into newspapers, get it publicized. They donated enough money for us to abolish a quarter-billion dollars of medical debt before the end of December 31st, 2018. A quarter billion dollars, and $50 million of that was for unpaid medical debt for military veterans.

“Now since that time, we’ve had many different organizations that have stepped up that want to be able to make a difference in their local communities,” explained Ashton. “Faith-based organizations are favorites of ours. These are the people, the churches, that call us and they say, ‘We want to be able to make a difference in our communities, and have programs, campaigns which for as little as $15,000 we can abolish almost $1 million worth of medical debt. Now, when you think about the return on the investment, every penny is a dollar, every dollar is a hundred dollars, every thousand dollars is $100,000, and being able to actually abolish a million dollars’ worth of medical debt for your neighbors, your community, that’s pretty exciting action to take.

“And then there’s also nurses. Who doesn’t love a nurse? We’ve had nurses associations come to us just recently who want to abolish all the debt that they can find in the state of South Dakota. And they’ve already done that in Minnesota and they’ve already done it in Michigan. So does that give you an idea of the enthusiasm and the importance of this work?”

The Iconoclast asked, “If someone from a small rural community wants to raise the barn for people in that area who have extreme medical debt, can RIP Medical Debt work a specified region?”

Ashton answered, “You’ve heard the statement ‘charity begins at home.’ We are able to locate that within any geographical area down to the zip code. If there is enough debt that is available to buy, what we do is they approach us and we do the research to find out what debt is available and then we go back to the donors and we say, ‘Well, this is what’s available and this is what we can buy it for’ and then they decide if they can come up with the money, and most of them do.

“There are also special groups of people that are designated as recipients of this generosity. Veterans, for example. Very few people understand that our veterans are under a significant burden financially for medical care. No one would guess that I am a former Navy man myself and I go to the VA, but I never realized that a lot of veterans and a lot of military are, by some hook or crook, not able to get medical expenses paid. My partner Craig Antico and I went down to D.C. and we met with a House subcommittee on Veterans’ health and what we learned there flabbergasted us. We learned that there’s $6 billion worth of unpaid ambulance and emergency services that are on the backs of veterans that have been unpaid for the past 10 years. Is that horrible?”

When asked if his charity has a position on high pharmaceutical prices, he said that the charity is, by statute, “politically agnostic” and as such it “sweeps up after the parade.”

However, he explained that “as authors of a book that intends to educate people, to alert them to the inequities that the system creates, there’s nobody safe, whether it be hospitals, physicians, big pharma, insurance companies that delay and deny – when you consider that 60 percent of all bankruptcies in the United States are related to medical debt that that 65 percent of all the people declaring bankruptcy actually had insurance, that gives you an idea of how moth-eaten our safety net is.”

Ashton said that the public must come to realize that “everybody’s gaming us and that there are no saints among us, that you have to follow the money. Once you follow the money and find out who’s on the take you will never look at your local congressman in the same way again. Who are they working for? Are they working for you and me as citizens or are they working for someone who is going to fund their next campaign?

“Look at these people that are funded by big pharma. Take a look at the ones that get big donations from insurance companies. Look at the ones that hospitals support. Just follow the money.

“And then get real about it and realize that unless people get educated and act on their education, we’re not going to have anything different for years to come.

“As authors of the book, we’re just plain sick of it. Each one of us, by the way, in case you think the book is some form of a diatribe or propaganda machine, all three of us see medical debt differently. We see the industries differently and we are even of different political persuasions, so it’s not like we’re telling people something that we want to spoon feed them. We want them to be just as curious as we are and just as inquisitive as we are and respect us for what we are. Even though the three of us may not agree about particular directions or programs to follow, all three of us believe that we need to make a change and it has to happen soon.”

Co-Authors Craig Antico and Robert Goff

Each chapter of the book was written by a different author on a rotational basis and based on their own historical perspectives. Jerry Ashton has more than 40 years of experience in the credit and collections industry. Robert Goff recently retired from 40 years in healthcare administration management. Craig Antico has 30 years in collections, debt buying, outsourcing, and consulting.

When The Iconoclast asked what’s next, Ashton said that his charity’s mission and the publication of the book is a wake-up call. “You talk about a national emergency. It’s within the four walls of a hospital, with medical debt hanging over our population.”

Ashton explained that building a wall where a few illegals slip through is a “perverse misdirection of time, attention, and money. One trillion dollars’ worth of medical debt. Do you know that 15 million Americans will exhaust their life savings to pay medical debt? Do you know that people have to make decisions as to whether or not as they are sitting at the kitchen table, do I pay this bill collectors’ bill for medical, for the doctor, or do I have my prescription filled?”

Ashton’s message to the public to spur involvement included reading the book End Medical Debt as a start.

“They also need to learn how to protect themselves. We wrote an earlier book, The Patient, the Doctor, and the Bill Collector, a medical debt survival guide. The more that people are educated, here are the steps that have to happen.

“Number one – awareness. And thanks to you and the work you are doing people will become aware of this that’s happened before.

“Now, once people are aware of things, then in our particular case, it has to resonate.” Regarding medical debt, “some would be compassionate enough to step up and say, ‘This isn’t right and I want to help,’ if someone wants to be politically oriented and start rounding up the community, get out the pitchforks, we’re going to storm the castle.

“If it touches people like that, that’s great, but the next most important thing is education. The more people educate themselves as to this system and how horrible it is, how dangerous it is to our health, that we are the only industrial nation that will allow its population to go bankrupt as individuals just because they got sick or because they got injured, so get yourselves educated.

“And lastly, action. And that action could be people who call you up and ask you for a donation, who they need to talk to locally, which legislator should be talked to about this, at this hospital was there a policy about charity care? That’s action.

“That would be my wish. If people would educate themselves and get active, I will feel that all the time we spent in putting out the book was worth it. And another thing about the book. It has a $15.95 price tag on Amazon. All three authors are donating our royalties. Every single purchase will abolish $500 worth of medical bills. How is that for bang for your buck?”

The Iconoclast asked how do people get involved or make donations. Ashton said that to make a donation to the charity go to RIPmedicaldebt.org. “We have plenty of directions there for people who want to either create a campaign or just want to do a random act of kindness.”

In the book, the authors lay bare the inner workings of our healthcare system. They show how it produces medical bills that people cannot ever pay, including insured middle-class people who think they are covered. They tell how the early hospitals that focused on patient health evolved into today’s healthcare conglomerates focused on patient revenue. They dissect the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) to show where theory and reality do not match. They expose how veterans get laden with medical debt that effectively tells them, “No thank you for your service.”

The book provides a glimpse into the big picture:

Medical debt destroys financial stability among large segments of America’s most vulnerable communities: The sick, the elderly, the poor, and veterans. It mostly targets the middle class, driving into poverty too many families already barely getting along, who cannot afford any unplanned illness or injury. An unexpected $500 out-of-pocket medical bill can cause hardship. One in five U.S. adults have medical debt on their credit reports, some with tens or hundreds of thousands in bills Medical debt on a credit report prevents one from buying or renting a home and vehicle, or even getting a job to pay those medical bills. Millennials at age 27, who often carry little or no insurance, carry more medical debt on their credit cards than any other age group. Patients with medical debt tend to avoid adding more debt by ignoring health problems, which worsens their health and increases their costs for care. The doctor of last resort becomes the expensive emergency room, which just compounds medical debt.

Flip to the other side of the picture. For health care providers, “uncompensated care” or bad debt drives doctors away from private practice. Almost half of all U.S. physicians are now employed by hospital-owned practices, where business margins often overrule health missions.

Unpaid and uncollectible medical bills threaten the fiscal viability of community hospitals, chiefly those providing charity care. A local hospital with massive medical debt may be saved by a community bailout, but taxpayers foot the bill. Higher local taxes make any community less desirable to businesses. Less local affluence attracts fewer talented care givers. Medical debt contributes to both urban and rural communities turning into “healthcare deserts” without affordable care.

Ashton believes that medical debt permeates American society and has become a crisis. “We cannot ignore it. We need to talk about medical debt. Voicing decades of experience in debt collections, debt buying and healthcare management, the authors of End Medical Debt bring deep expertise to the problem of medical debt.”

12 MEDICAL DEBT FACTS

The United States spends more per capita (per person) on health care than any other nation on earth.
The USA is the only industrialized country reliant on commercial insurance instead of universal healthcare.
At least 20 percent of all working-age Americans with health insurance have trouble paying medical bills.
An unexpected $500 out-of-pocket medical bill is too much for many people to pay or pay in a timely way.
More than 60 percent of all insured Americans will deplete most or all of their savings to pay medical bills.
About 10 percent of adults delay or skip medical care due to costs; worsening health costs more to treat.
At least 43 million Americans have about $75 billion in past-due medical bills on their credit reports.
Medical debt on a credit report generally prevents people from buying or renting homes and cars.
Medical debt on a credit report can keep people from getting a job to pay off their medical bills.
Only ten percent of all unpaid medical bills appear on credit reports; at least $1 trillion exists.
Medical debt drives middle class and lower-income families into poverty or homelessness.
Medical debt is the number one cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States.