🌅 Today’s stat: $30 billion

SOURCE

Undue Medical Debt

WHAT TO KNOW

• Nonprofit Undue Medical Debt has acquired $30 billion of medical debt belonging to an estimated 20 million Americans in a landmark deal that will prevent the debt from being sold and protect millions of people from being targeted by collectors. Undue Medical Debt pioneered its debt-relief strategy a decade ago, using charitable donations to buy medical debt at steeply discounted prices and then freeing people from their obligation to pay.

WHY IT MATTERS

• Debt is a defining feature of American health care: more than 100 million Americans—a staggering 41% of all U.S. adults—currently have medical or dental bills they can’t pay. That burden forced Americans to borrow an estimated $74 billion to pay for health care in 2024, while around 530,000 Americans go bankrupt each year due to medical debt.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• In January, the Biden administration’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) finalized a rule removing medical debt from most consumer credit reports and prohibiting lenders from using people’s medical information in their lending decisions. Last week, the Trump administration told a federal district court it will revoke the guidance aimed at reigning in medical debt, while the administration continued to pursue its overall dismantling of the CFPB in a separate case in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.