Do you want to be an Americanadio Scott's longshell 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. More than third of Ohio and struggled play her medical bills last month, the city of Cincinnati, and this is kind of like a side eye to Aftab who's running for mayor, So yeah, that's probably why. But gave a million and a half to nonprofit that buy his medical debt from hospitals. That wiped out some two hundred and twenty million dollars in debt for about twelve thousand Cincinnati. 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 is 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 driving through Toleda, was thinking to me, said I stopped and had a packos 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, how still 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 tap 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 talkingot? How much should people just pay an interest on 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 who 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 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 complants you hear from the debt collection industry, which I can't imagine a lot of people siding 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 conscious consequence 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 it. The government's going to and you know there's a moral hazard there obviously too, And that's that's a problem with universal health care is you know, well people just simply go to the emergency. If I don't have to pay for it, I'll overuse it. 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 out or debt 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, 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 predatory 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. 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. They're 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 with housebook to fifty seven.
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 ohioans carries some sort of medical debts and number one cause of bankrow. I think we're the top two costs of bankruptcy in the United States, but one drives the other. Joblessness. It 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 guard 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 on hundred 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 we got we got to ease back a little bit here, man, after a full year. 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 sell 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 of 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 garnishments. 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 to stay down out 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 conscious, should 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 it's something at work or I fell or something along the way, and it happens all
of us at some point or another. And now we're taking a quarter of your wages. That seems confiscate. How can you live on the other seventy five percent?
And 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 garnershment 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, and council approved a million and a half to a nonprofit that collected money and wiped out about two hundred and 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 residentstually, and that not profit is undo medical debt. They do great work and they negotiate directly with the hospitals.
So yeah, I'd 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 subsidies. 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 pad 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 into this insane stuff. I mean Obamacare, it makes it does to make it affordable. Uh, it's extremely expensive, is the problem? Affism is no where you're just here,
you're subsidizing something that's extremely expensed. Let let's figure out why we're paying you know, three times more than most double what most countries are for less health care 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 worke at healthcare system, would it would absolutely agree with that. And so I know we're here not to talk about ADO, but what 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 on new medical debt. Thank you very much. It really help a lot of people. But yes, you are correct, it does not solve the broken healthcare 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 now are 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 closes 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 going to hurt our rule hospitals in the long run is the cuts to Medicaid and Medicare and also the increased costs because the ACA sun 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 sue their patients. This is actually a pretty aggressive practice with this one hospital,
because actually a lot of hospitals don't do that. They tend to try to work with the patient or they or they send it to debt collection. But not every but not every hospital does that a couple of the hospitals in the area in the state have said that this doesn't this build has 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 subsidies going away. It's really going to hurt our rural hospital systems. Not prohibiting putting medical debta credible.
It's a hospital 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 a year, capit to three percent interest, ban wage 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 to 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. Just kind of look at all of your options. So 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 stass 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 biopersian sport for those are biparsionation.
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, you 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. Gene Schmid in the sixty second district, so you know, fairly rural area is there to Claremont County, so 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 incentivize someone not to pay their bills, which which I like. She is Michelle Grimm, Democrat at Toledo House Bill fifty spence two fifty seven, along with Genie Schmidt here in Claremont County, and I
wish all the best. Thanks again for coming on the show. Thank you, Scott be Well. Yeah, we can talk more about this too. And I know there's people that just dig their heels and go, oh my god, how it's more welfare for Yeah. The problem is this, you know we have now double we spend our triple rather the amount of money we spend on healthcare from two thousand to today, the number has tripled. And you know when you have sixty percent of consumer debt on credit reports.
It is because of medical issues, medical bills that people can't pay, and a declining number of businesses are offering health insurance. That is a catastrophe. Maybe you're feeling that yourself and your family your thoughts five one, three, seven, four nine, seven thousand and eight or the Big one talk back iHeartRadio app. We will get your calls in and got more just ahead here on the Scot Slan Show right after the news. I'm seven hundred wo