A former Navy journalist and veteran, Jerry’s interest was piqued by crowds gathering in Zuccotti Park during the early days of the Occupy Wall Street movement. After learning about one working group’s desire to pay off medical debts for struggling people as an act of social good, an idea started to germinate. Instead of collecting on unpayable medical debt, why not focus on abolishing that burden instead?
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From helping John Oliver abolish $15 million of medical debt on his HBO Show, Last Week Tonight in 2016 to the nonprofit wiping out $3 billion to date in unpayable medical debt, Jerry’s inspiration has helped create a strong and lasting institution for the organization’s loyal donors and major corporate partners.
From a NY Times opinion piece: [...] [...] The article goes on to talk about the well-known failures of the US health care system, but I'd be more interested in learning more about this particular...
From a NY Times opinion piece:
Adam Mabry, the lead pastor of that congregation, Aletheia Church, a multiethnic, 1,400-member Boston-area Christian community, doesn’t know Ms. Matos, and she doesn’t know him; the two have never spoken. But he told me: “It doesn’t take a theologian to connect the dots. Jesus paid my debt at unbelievable cost to himself, so it probably makes sense for me to pay another person’s debt at some degree of cost to myself.”
Aletheia worked through RIP Medical Debt, a charitable organization founded in 2014 by two former debt collection executives, Craig Antico and Jerry Ashton. It uses donations to buy portfolios of medical debt at a fraction of their value — and then forgives it.
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One of RIP Medical Debt’s early fund-raising partners was NBC Universal, which ran a segment about the company’s campaign on its Dallas station in February 2018. The story caught the attention of Covenant Church, an enormous network based in North Texas. That Easter, Covenant donated $100,000 to relieve local families’ medical debt. RIP Medical Debt said since then it has worked with 465 congregations and religious groups to relieve about $820 million in medical debt across the country.
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RIP Medical Debt estimates that just one dollar can purchase, and relieve, $100 in medical debt. So with a series of relatively moderate fund-raising efforts and donations from corporations, nonprofit and religious groups, and individuals, RIP Medical Debt said, it has been able to eliminate almost $2.7 billion in medical debt.
The article goes on to talk about the well-known failures of the US health care system, but I'd be more interested in learning more about this particular charity, the sort of thing you could learn from one of GiveWell's charity reviews. There are a fair number of stories about RIP Medical Debt, but they have little depth to them; they talk about individual donations.
Co-Founder of RIP Medical Debt, Jerry Ashton, Retires from Nonprofit
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From a NY Times opinion piece:
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The article goes on to talk about the well-known failures of the US health care system, but I'd be more interested in learning more about this particular charity, the sort of thing you could learn from one of GiveWell's charity reviews. There are a fair number of stories about RIP Medical Debt, but they have little depth to them; they talk about individual donations.