Don't want to be in American.
Scott's long show back on seven hundred WLW fun fat.
Here's a fun fact to start your busy day.
The amount of money that we spend in healthcare in the United States has tripled since two thousand, So in less than a quarter century, less than twenty five years, the amount of money we spend on healthcare has tripled, So one point four trillion to five trillion, pretty close to triple. Right in the fall, the city of Cincinnati gave money to wipe up help wipeout medical debt. Kind of a controversial story, but that was done just a
few months ago as a matter of fact. So next up, though, state wide, is Ohio's Medical Debt Fairness Act.
What is that? Well?
Ohio Representative Michelle Grimm out of Toledo, out of the Glass Cities here, she has a sponsor of House Bill two fifty seven.
Michelle, how are you?
I'm great? How are you, Scott?
I'm doing fine? All is well in the Glass City?
I presume, yeah, all as well?
All right?
I had I think Gary Jeff Walker, one of our guys at work here was having through Toledo, was thinking to me, so I stopped and had a Pacos honky dog. And let me tell you something, if you're passing through child to stop at Tony Paco's and get some chili, get a honky dog, much different than Cincinnati style, but pleasing none the loss. All right, So medical debt has I think it's the still the leading source and has been for a while leading source on paid bills and
credit reports for a long time now. In medical debt's like sixty percent of consumer debt on credit reports, which is incredible. So that those that's the rail that we're facing here. So what does House Bill two fifty seven do? What's your proposal to do? Sure?
So House Bill two fifty seven would do three key things. It would prohibit hospitals debt collectors from reporting on credit reports, It would ban wage gurnishment, and it would cap interest of medical debt ode to three percent, because right now we have a statutory eight percent interest, so that would cap that at three percent.
Okay, So let's start with a three percent medical to the interest that you would pay right now on any medical bill, certainly higher than three percent, and that keeps up with inflation, presumably tied to maybe tied to inflation here but typically how much of that debt? Are we talking about howmuch should people just pay an interest on a medical debt?
Now?
So I you know, I think that's hard to gauge, but I would say that the average person has about the average person has medical debt has about twelve hundred dollars, and while we don't report under five hundred dollars and credit reports right now, that's taking away about the majority of people who have medical debt and not giving them a chance to repair their credit or purchase a home or even get a job, because credit reports are they continder people getting a job or getting an apartment or
getting a mortgage. So so that that leads a lot of people out.
Well getting getting getting insurance for that metal like car insurance for example.
Everybody pulls your credit report now, yeah.
For sure. And so our bill would prohibit any type of credit reporting and medical debt.
All right, So on that one of the one of the complaints you hear from the debt collection industry, which I can't imagine a lot of people signing with the debt collection industry, but it says, hey, listen, you're essentially encouraging people to be dead beats Basically, what they're saying is that if you take a constant consequences away from people for non payment, that's going to lead the higher healthcare costs for everyone because people look at it going, well,
I don't have to pay if the government's going to and you know there's a moral hazard there obviously too, And that's that's the problem with universal healthcare is you know, well, people just simply go to the emergent if I don't have to pay for it all over use.
If that's a.
Theory, so you would still have to pay your bills, of course, because it would just not be on your credit report. But I would also argue that there's been studies that said medical debt is a poor indicator of paying other types of credit. So if you had credit cards, or paying your mortgage, or paying your light bill, your electric bill, but if you have medical debt, that's a poor indicator whether you're going to pay other debts back. And people do want to pay off their medical bills.
Medical bills can be medical debt can be embarrassing, but it's not their fault. It's really a fault of a broken system. It's not a debt of luxury. It is a debt of necessity. So that's what I would argue back, is that people people do want to pay their bills back, and putting these creditory packs practices in place hinders a lot of people from doing that.
In that regard, Michelle Grim, is there a means test or income requirement? I mean, you know, it sounds all long good that people do want to pay their debts off generally speaking, But how do we separate people who generally can't afford to pay versus those who simply say I'm not going to pay or choose not to pay.
So I think that there when you look at the studies, it's a lot of people who cannot afford to pay, a lot of people do want to pay their bills, but they simply can't afford it. There they're choosing between putting food on the table, or paying their their electric bill, or paying their mortgage, or paying their medical debt off. So it's it is a lot of people who don't
have any savings or anything like that. A lot of people don't have a thousand dollars for an emergency, and that's why we're putting people in a bind with medical debt. But we want to help people.
Well, yeah, this is Michelle Grim she's out of Toledo House Bill two fifty seven. She's co sponsoring this one to help people with medical debt, because one in three Ohio ons carries some sort of medical debts. The number one cause of bankrow, I think with the top two cost of bankruptcy in the United States, but one drives
the other. Job blessness would be number one, and health insurance bankruptcy is another one, and I think those two go hand in hand because for a lot of people, their jobs and healthcare tied together, which is part of the problem. This would limit medical interest to what you say, three percent a year. You can't guarn someone's wages for medical debt collection, and hospitals and providers can't report medical debt to credit agencies right now. And I think in
the last few years were reformed. It used to be, I believe Michelle, unpaid medical bills were kicked over to credit reporting agencies after like sixty or one hundred and twenty days, and now it's a full year. Correct, correct, Yeah, So, I mean even the credit industry has said, hey, you know, we've got to got we got to ease back a little bit here maan after a fully. Now does that mean that people aren't making any payments whatsoever? If you pay a little bit of money, does that keep you
from being reported to credit agencies? How does that work? Or is that with this what two fifty seven seeks to do.
So I think it depends. I think typically I think if you're making payments that it would not be reported. But I think in some instances you will see reports that like people are making payments or maybe they fell behind so and you know what I was talking about before, they maybe sell behind one or two months and then it gets reported on the credit report. So you know, the system isn't really fair for consumers, and we want to make it a little fair for people to get ahead,
for people to have a fighting chance. So you know, I think that a lot of the arguments against this too is around wage garnishments. I do want your listeners to look up this article from Signal, Ohio about a rural hospital in Logan County who has who has sued twenty seven hundred patients in the last two years. Yeah, and a lot of their a lot of the judgments
in court were wage garnishment. So people are paying up to twenty five percent of their They're getting up to twenty five percent of their checks garnished their payroll checks, plus they're paying that eight percent interest, So.
That's that's pretty cool.
I think most people listening, Wow, Okay, I'm not quite sure I want the state of medical bills. At the same time, like, how am I supposed to live if i'm that's almost like child support.
Right.
In child support, you had a consciousution have a child, and you provide for your child. That's a different matter than Hey, I just got sick, and maybe I got sick because this is something at work or I feil or something along the way. All of us at some point or another. And now that we're taking a quarter of your wages, that seems confiscate. How can you live on the other seventy five percent?
And I can? I go back to what you just said. So we're not again, we're not suggesting that the state is paying medical bills. We're just saying we're going to have these parameters of credit reports, wage guarnership, and interest rates. So I just wanted to kind of.
Yeah, that's fair.
I was I was referring more to what we did in Cincinnati. Not long ago when council approved a million and a half to a nonprofit that collected money and wiped out about two hundred twenty million debt for twelve thousand Cincinnatians and just buying the debt from the credit companies.
So I actually did that in Toledo about it'll be three years ago, So Toledo kind of led the way for cities. County was the first one, and so we actually eliminated debt for about one hundred and twelve thousand people around the region, including forty three thousand Lucas County residents. And that no profit is undue medical debt. They do great work, so and they negotiate directly with the hospitals.
So yeah, I contemplate that one because this is outside of your scope as a state lawmaker, Michelle Grimm. But the beef I have, like, for example, the government shutdown over Obamacare and the ACA. You know, we're fighting at
our subsidy is the problem. It's not not healthcare. We're so we're taking money from a group of taxpayers and transferring it to another money of ped taxpayers without addressing the problem in Congress for a long time, and we would need all this stuff, if we would just reform healthcare properly instead of having Democrats and Republicans fight each other and do this insane stuff. I mean, Obamacare, it makes it doesn't make it affordable. It's extremely expensive. Is
the problem. Afford is a misnomer. You're just you're you're subsidizing something that's extremely expended. Let's figure out why we're paying you know, three times more than most double what most countries are for less health care.
It doesn't make any sense.
Yeah, yeah, no, I would absolutely agree with that, and I would I would say that a lot of people in the healthcare space looking at the core problem, which is our broken healthcare system, which it would absolutely agree with that. And so I know we're here not to talk about and do. But what what they're able to do is they're able to purchase that pennies on the dollar from hospital systems or second second, the secondary market. But you know, people do uh? People have you know?
I've gotten I've gotten a lot of emails and a lot of calls saying like I got a letter from New Medical Debt, thank you very much. It really did help a lot of people. But yes, you are correct, and does not solve the brokenhair health care system, right, and you know that's what you know, that's what we need to keep working on. And so bills like House Bill to fifty seven, they make the rules a little bit fairer, but we still have a lot of work to do.
Yeah, you mentioned Logan County, Small and Logan Counties right in our listing areas in the I think around the
where the Armstrong Space, you know, Wapa Canata up that way. Yeah, yeah, about an hour an hour and a half hour forty minutes from us here in Cincinnati, So Logan County, pastor, and if you're going up north to Toledo, for example, so in that county you said that, you know, they're garnishing people's wages and like, and I kind of get that in a sense is I don't know if they're being confiscatory and it's you know, the evil capitalists twirling his mustache in the corner lighting a cigar with one
thousand dollars bills. But in some sense, hospitals, and especially rural hospitals are under struggles right now. We're having a number of them close as a result of the healthcare system which is not going to serve anyone in those areas. How do you ensure they still get fair payment while protecting the patients from excessive debt collection practices.
So I think what's gonna hurt our rule hospitals in the long run is the cuts to Medicaid and Medicare and also the increased costs because the ACA seven, the subsidies may go away. So that's going to be really where they're going to hit get hit the hardest. It's not gonna be because they can't put it on our current report or they can't garnish wages. A lot of hospitals actually don't garnish wages or soothe their patients. This is actually a pretty aggressive practice with this one hospital
because actually a lot of hospitals don't do that. They you know, tend to try to work with the patient or they or they send it to debt collections. Right, but not every but not every hospital does that. Couples of hospitals in the area in the state have said that this doesn't this build hos those two fifty seven doesn't really affect us. It doesn't affect our operations. So but so yeah, that's what I would say.
Is that maybe it's just maybe more like the rural I mean, because you look at rural areas that are losing population and they've got one hospital or clinic and now you've got fewer people in there. So I get the model. Whereas in Cincinnati and Dayton, Toledo, in bigger cities, you can absorb those costs, but better you have more people to draw.
Yeah, but again I think that what's coming down the pipeline here is our cuts to Medicaid and our cuts to Medicare and the ac stubsidies going away. It is really going to hurt our rural hospital systems. Not prohibiting putting medical debta credible.
It's a house built two fifty seven, and medical debt is a crisis in America, has been for a long time.
Makes up about sixty percent of our consumer debt.
This would limit the interest on that to three percent of here capita three percent interest, ban age garnishment for medical debt collections, and stop hospitals and providers and debt collectors from reporting that debt to credit agencies provided you're paying something. I mean, isn't it safe to say in the end, most hospitals, hey listen, I owe all this
money and here's what I make. We've got to work on a payment plan, whether it's you know, twenty bucks a month or something like that, which you'll never touch it, but at least I'm giving you something. Does that satisfy most hospitals if put the effort in.
So, you know, I think I can't speak for the hospital systems, but certainly a lot of the hospital systems do you work out payment plans. They also offer charity care options. People can ask for charity care options, and I would really encourage folks to do that kind of look at all of your options. So if you if you do have medical debt or bills you can't pay, ask questions. So this is kind of my call to action for everybody. Ask questions. Ask you know, hey why was I charged this?
Or can I set up a paynut plan? Or hey
I can't afford this right now? So I would say keep you know, negotiate with the hospital or the deck collection agency, and just make sure that you're uh negotiating that way, because you you do have negotiating power and you can work on uh making sure that you you do you do keep up with your bills and you don't fall behind and it does go on your credit report until you know, until just tass so so so yeah, I would say, like, you know, just work, you know, talk,
talk to the hospitals, look at your medical bills, ask questions, and you know the hospitals should be happy to work with you.
Right, Uh, Michelle that you have biopartisan sport for those are bipartiination.
Yes, yeah, absolutely, it touches every So my my joint sponsor is Representative Jeane Schmidt. So uh, I you know, it touches everybody's district, everybody's district. Yeah, so you know, it's not just rural districts or urban districts or suburban districts. Is everybody's district and everybody everybody knows someone who has had medical debt or has medical debt currently. And you know, again, we want to make sure that the playing field is a little fair for people, and we want to make
sure people get ahead and not keep them down. And I think the House will two fifty seven. Uh, while it doesn't fix everything, it makes us a little bit closer to uh a fair system.
Yeah, it makes sense.
Uh.
Geene Schmid in the sixty second district, so you know, fairly rural area is there too, Claremont County. So uh it has urban and rural support and and it's bipartisan, which I like a lot. And it also helps people and it doesn't seem to unfairly uh insteadive by someone
not to pay their bills, which I like. She is Michelle Grimm, Democrat at Toledo Hospital fifty spence two fifty seven, along with Janie Schmidt here in Claremont County, and I wish all the best, thanks again for coming on the show. Thank you Scott so too long didn't read. We have a government buying back medical debt from pennies on the Dottarm to discharge that debt for Ohioans, while the other side of the government causes our healthcare insurance to be
so cost prohibitive people go into debt for it. One hand, I don't know breaking the other so to speak. I don't know what to make of this. Just address the core issue about that, not at the state level, but at the federal level. We've got a news update. We'll switch it up Bengals at Buffalo this weekend. Austin Elmore here from ESPN fifteen thirty. We'll talk about that and Kyle Schwarber Watch as well on seven hundred w weld