Governments target medical debt with COVID relief funds
An increasing number of municipal, county and state governments are using federal pandemic relief funds to pay residents’ burdensome medical debt
Millions of Americans mired in medical debt face difficult financial decisions every day — pay the debt or pay for rent, utilities and groceries. Some may even skip necessary health care for fear of sinking deeper into debt.
To address the problem, an increasing number of municipal, county and state governments are devising plans to spend federal coronavirus pandemic relief funds to eliminate residents' medical debt and ease those debt burdens.
The City Council in the Boston suburb of Somerville last month unanimously passed a resolution to spend $200,000 of the city's $77 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding that could clear as much as $4.3 million in medical debt, said Willie Burnley Jr., one of the city councilors behind the effort. As many 5,000 of the city's 80,000 residents could benefit.
Cook County, Illinois, which includes Chicago, and Pittsburgh, New Orleans and Toledo, Ohio, are among more than a dozen communities that have set into motion or are considering similar plans. Democratic Connecticut governor Ned Lamont last week proposed spending $20 million in ARPA funds to eliminate as much as $2 billion in state residents' medical debts.
