NC governor announces plan to eliminate $4B in medical debt

NORTH CAROLINA — A new plan could wipe or reduce your medical debt if you live in North Carolina.

Gov. Roy Cooper announced the plan Monday. He claims it could relieve $4 billion of existing medical debt with no new costs to taxpayers.

“North Carolinians should not be saddled with a mountain of debt that they can never repay,” Cooper said.

The plan would incentivize hospitals to wipe out certain debt in order to get more money from Medicaid. To get that extra cash, hospitals would have to relieve all medical debt deemed uncollectible dating back to Jan. 1, 2014.

It would apply to anyone not enrolled in Medicaid or to people with debt exceeding 5% of their annual income.

Hospitals would also need to relieve all medical debt for Medicaid patients and not report a patient’s debt covered by these policies to a credit reporting agency.

For the plan to go into place, it has to be approved by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

“First, we expanded Medicaid and now, we must reduce medical debt to help North Carolinians and our economy thrive,” Cooper said.

Hospitals who choose not to follow these new requests would get the standard amount of Medicaid funds.

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