Harris hasn’t yet released many details about her strategy to wipe out medical debt, but policy experts say a newly implemented medical debt relief program from North Carolina could offer a road map.
Earlier this month, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper announced that nearly 100 hospitals in the state had signed on to participate in the Medical Debt Relief Incentive Program, which he said will incentivize hospitals to eliminate $4 billion in medical debt for 2 million low- and middle-income patients over the next two years.
Starting next year, Cooper said, the program will also take steps to prevent the accumulation of new debt in part by curbing aggressive debt collection practices by hospitals, such as adding on high interest rates or fees to unpaid bills, or selling the debt to third-party collection agencies.
Vice President Harris closely coordinated with Cooper on the plan and participated in the announcement, according to Neale Mahoney, a professor of economics at Stanford University who served on the White House National Economic Council in 2022 and 2023. At a campaign event last week in Raleigh, North Carolina, Harris thanked Cooper for canceling medical debt in his state, and Cooper introduced Harris at the convention Thursday.
In an economic policy proposal shared by Harris’ campaign last week, she stated that as president she would “work with states” to cancel medical debt for millions of Americans and to “help prevent such debt from accumulating in the future” — a key tentpole of the North Carolina plan.
Posted by John3262005
1 Comment
This could genuinely move the needle.
As the article points out, Medical debt is too a large degree random—it is, unlike something like Student Loan Debt, incredibly hard to frame as anyone’s fault. That makes attempts to forgive it much harder to attack and also, more likely to get broad support. A lot of lower and middle class people might literally have (or know someone who would have) their lives changed by this. It might draw over undecideds and honestly, could even tempt some Never-Trumpers. The fact it comes from NC also makes it hard to frame as progressivism run amok.