The medical debt owing to a charity hospital, which at one point totaled $200,000, was the financial equivalent of an anvil hovering over the heads of Donna and Gary Lindabury of Vylas, North Carolina, for 15 years.
Donna, 72, told NBC News that the bill, which was owed to Atrium Health for emergency heart surgery Gary had in 2009, had increased over time to include over $100,000 in interest costs. “We paid our bills, we tried, we were striving,” she claimed. However, I was just unable to pay that hospital.
The hospital system put a lien on the Lindaburys’ house as the years passed and the debt persisted, enabling it to recoup the amount owed in the event that the couple sold the house.
We’ve been so preoccupied with merely surviving this issue, “I’m 80,” Gary said.
The Lindaburys then received a letter from Atrium Health in early November informing them that they would be released from any further obligations to the hospital and that the remaining $92,262 on the lien would be removed.
They were among the beneficiaries of a decision the hospital system announced in September to release 11,500 liens on people s homes in North Carolina and five other states, some of which dated back 20 years or more.
According to Donna, it is like a miracle. We simply believed that we would never be able to own our home and be able to give it to our children.
The goal of Advocate Health, Atrium Health’s parent company, is to give everyone in the communities we serve access to high-quality care, regardless of their financial situation, according to a statement released by the organization’s spokesperson.
The statement also said, “As a leader in health care, we have long been committed to programs that help people who are struggling with medical debt.” The next logical step in our ongoing efforts to ensure that patients are not burdened by medical costs was to remove judgment liens on residences in order to recoup unpaid medical bills.
Almost 18% of the United States gross domestic product goes to health care far more than other developed countries with roughlyone-thirdof those dollars spent on hospital care, according to National Health Expenditures data. And as health care costs rise, more and more patients struggle to pay for their care, even those with insurance.
Americans owe $220 billion inmedical debt, according toKFF, a nonprofit health policy research, polling and news organization. Health care expenses are a top cause ofbankruptcyin the U.S., a 2019 study published in the American Journal of Public Health found. Researchconducted by the Urban Institutefound that medical debt is more common in the South and among people in low-income ZIP codes. In 2021, the institute found that three North Carolina counties were among the 10 U.S. counties whose residents held the most medical debt.
Advocate Health s decision to release thousands of liens on former patients homes came afterNBC News detailedhow its Atrium Health unit aggressively pursued patients medical debts.
Medical debt judgments can last up to 20 years in North Carolina, and according to a study by Duke University School of Law faculty and the Office of State Treasurer, hospitals in the state sued 7,517 patients and their family members to collect medical debt from January 2017 through June 2022.
Many of these suits resulted in default judgments and allowed for 8% interest charges, inflating the amounts owed as occurred in the Lindaburys case. In total, the report said, interest charges and other added fees accounted for 35% of the $57.3 million in total judgments owed by patients.
Under a provision of theAffordable Care Act, nonprofit hospitals are supposed to offer financial assistance programs to patients who can t afford care, but patients don t always receive information about these programs, health care experts say.
Recognizing the burden that medical debt places on consumers, some states have moved in recent years to remedy the problem. Arizona and Colorado now cap the interest rates levied on medical debt, while Delaware recently passed a law prohibiting interest and late fees on these bills. Maryland requires hospitals to reimburse patients who paid their bills but should have been eligible for financial assistance.
Back in North Carolina, the Lindaburys are still processing the release of their debt burden. It s like being in prison, Donna said, and now you re out.
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