Christian network helps erase medical debt for many

The good news came a few weeks ago in business-sized, windowed envelopes with a New York return address.

At first glance, the envelopes looked like bills of some sort. But instead of invoices, 201 people in Cape Girardeau County found letters in the envelopes telling them their medical debts had been wiped out.

“We are pleased to inform you that you no longer owe the balance on the debt,” the letters began and explained the bills — totaling $269,428 — had been forgiven, thanks to the efforts of a Christian cable and satellite television network headquartered in Marion, Illinois.

The debt payoff is part of a new mission of TCT Television Network, which worked with RIP Medical Debt to erase more than $2.5 million of past-due medical bills turned over to collection agencies.

According to Judy Church, TCT Ministries’ vice president of sales and marketing, the network’s decision to help wipe out millions of dollars of medical bills was made in response to prayer requests.

“People were writing in with prayer requests every day and a lot of them were related to health issues and medical bills,” she said and explained the network’s founder, Garth Coonce, felt medical debt was a “mission” TCT could address.

“He decided it was a real need,” Church said. “There are people out there who are below the poverty line or who don’t have insurance or who fall between the cracks and can’t pay their bills, so we joined forces with this agency that gets rid of medical debt for pennies on the dollar.”

The debt payoff was all done anonymously.

“We have no idea who these individuals (whose debts were erased) are,” TCT Ministries chief financial officer Shane Chaney said. “We don’t select them and have no say so in who it is that the debt is relieved from.”

Chaney said TCT made a contribution of “several tens of thousands of dollars” to RIP Medical Debt, which was then able to leverage the donation to erase the outstanding medical bills of 2,592 people in parts of four states — Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky and Ohio.

“A lot of medical debt gets bundled and resold and passed along to debt collection agencies,” Chaney said and explained what RIP Medical Debt does is to “go into the market, find medical debt and purchase it and then for donations to their ministry you can relieve a bunch of medical debt for people who were never going to be able to pay it off.”

According to RIP Medical Debt’s website, the company was launched in 2014 as a 501(C)(3) not-for-profit organization by a pair of former collection industry executives who decided to put their collection experience to work to forgive debt rather than collect on it. Eligible families and individuals are chosen randomly by RIP Medical Debt based on their debt levels, demographics and other factors. According to RIP Medical Debt co-founder and chief operating officer Craig Antico, more than $900 million in debt has been abolished nationwide through the organization’s efforts over the past five years.

“We basically contributed to RIP Medical Debt the amount of money they needed to alleviate this debt,” Chaney said. “Obviously it wasn’t $2.5 million, but it was a substantial donation on our part.”

Although TCT does not know the identities of the people who benefited from the debt relief, RIP Medical Debt did provide the ministry with information about the number of people who were impacted and the amount of debt that was erased.

“In Cape Girardeau, 135 folks were relieved of just under $175,000 of debt,” Chaney said. That averages out to almost $1,300 per bill. “And in Jackson, there were 56 individuals who had bills amounting to about $72,000.” The remaining 10 Cape Girardeau County beneficiaries live elsewhere in the county.

Harrisburg, Illinois, had the largest number of beneficiaries at 155 who had bills totaling $450,000 wiped out.

“Apparently, a few people there had some very big bills,” Chaney said.

Church and Chaney said they believe TCT Ministries will continue to work with RIP Medical Debt in future debt relief projects.

“Hopefully, people will join us so we can do more and more and more,” Church said.

More information about TCT Ministries is online at www.TCT.tv. RIP Medical Debt details can be found at www.ripmedicaldebt.org.

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