Georgia church donates $25K to erase over $5.7M in medical debt
A church in Georgia has helped to eliminate more than $5.7 million in medical debt by donating approximately $25,000 as part of a Christmas charity project.
Members of Peavine Baptist Church of Rock Springs gave $24,879.65 by Christmas Eve to erase $5.7 million in medical debt for more than 4,200 people living in northwest Georgia.
“Medical debt is the No. 1 cause of consumer bankruptcy in the United States,” Peavine Baptist Pastor Joel Southerland told his congregation, as quoted by Baptist Press.
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“It gets on your credit report. It can stop you from getting a house loan [or] car loan, sometimes a job. Twenty-six percent of Americans deal with the crippling effects of medical debt.”
According to Sutherland, his church annually gives to various charities during the Christmas season, with additional funds being raised last year to aid foster care, local food pantries, and a pro-life pregnancy care center.
“Six years ago, we did 12 Days of Christmas, which came about after we polled people on what types of Christmas projects they would like for us to do,” Southerland told BP.
“We took the top 12. That introduced us to the partnership with foster care as well as the opportunity to gift a car to a local schoolteacher who was young and early in her career.”
As part of their effort, Peavine Baptist Church worked with a nonprofit known as Undue Medical Debt, which also goes by the name RIP Medical Debt.
Founded in 2014 and headquartered in New York, RIP Medical Debt frequently partners with churches across the United States to raise money in order to erase medical debt.
The nonprofit uses the money that is raised to purchase medical debt for pennies on the dollar through the collection system and proceeds to forgive patients' medical debt.
Last year, for example, The Altar Fellowship of Johnson City, Tennessee, raised around $50,000 with RIP Medical Debt, with the funds being used to purchase $8 million in medical debt.
Altar Fellowship Pastor Mattie Montgomery told The Christian Post in an interview last August that he wanted “extravagant generosity to be one of the things that the church is known for."
"And I don't just mean our church, The Altar Fellowship; I mean the Church nationally and internationally. I want people to know that, in a moment of crisis, the place they need to get to is to be with a group of people who follow Jesus. They need to get into a church,” he added.
On Tuesday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced that it had finalized a rule removing approximately $49 billion in medical bills from the credit reports of around 15 million Americans.
According to the CFPB, the new rule will strengthen privacy protections, concluding that medical debt gives “little predictive value” on whether borrowers can repay other debts.
“People who get sick shouldn’t have their financial future upended,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra, as quoted in the announcement.
“The CFPB’s final rule will close a special carveout that has allowed debt collectors to abuse the credit reporting system to coerce people into paying medical bills they may not even owe.”
