How a nonprofit is helping tackle medical debt for millions of Americans

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) — If you think you are alone in dealing with medical debt, guess again.

Recent studies have shown that medical debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States. Studies also note that people struggling with medical debt are three times more likely to struggle with depression.

"There's a hundred million people in the country that have medical debt. It's to the tune of $220 billion by some estimates," said Allison Sesso, the CEO & President of Undue Medical Debt. "We are a national non-profit that's been around since 2014. So, not a terribly long history."

A brief history, yes, but with big impacts. To date, Undue Medical has worked to remove 14 billion dollars of medical debt. Helping nearly 9 million people in the process.

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"There's clarity that people are suffering under these medical debts, and what we can do from where we sit is pretty impactful."

So, how does it work?

"You cannot apply for this medical debt relief," says Sesso. "What we do is we just try to get our hands on as much debt as we can. We buy debt from hospitals and secondary debt from other places like health care providers. We use largely donated dollars and sometimes government funds to make those purchases."

And that's where St. Andrews Episcopal Church in Maryville comes in.

"So we have a grant program that we call, Love in Action," says Reverend Amy Bradley.

According to Undue Medical, St. Andrews Episcopal, through its 'Love In Action' program, raised $15,000 for the non-profit. Translated, these funds eliminated $4.3 million dollars of medical debt for 4,478 people. It was huge effort that made a big impact for many.

"Yes, you look at people who are actually having to make the choice between feeding their families or paying their medical debt or receiving medical treatment," said Rev. Bradley. "I mean, that's an impossible choice to make. Yet, we have people in our community making those decisions every day. And it does trickle down to every aspect of their lives."

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Making an impact, by utilizing a formula that benefits all parties involved, said Sesso.

"I think the beauty of our model is because we can buy the debt at pennies on the dollar, we can help a lot of people for a relatively low price." She added, "We're open for business. We really do want to get as much debt as possible. It's really whether the hospital is willing to sell us the debt. There's no really solid reason that hospitals should not work with us and sell their debt."

If you would like to learn more, fundraise, or are a hospital or healthcare provider that would like to work with Undue Medical Debt, visit unduemedicaldebt.org .

In the Knoxville area, several hospital groups provide online information about their billing, insurance and payment assistance possibilities, including UT Medical CenterCovenant Health , and Tennova North Medical Center . Find out more about each hospital group's policies by clicking on their name.