In June 2016, television comedy host John Oliver bought nearly $15 million (£11.8 million) in unpaid medical debt for just $60,000 (£47,000) through a debt collection company created for the purpose. Instead of using debt collectors to demand payment from the roughly 9,000 patients linked to the accounts, the producers of HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver transferred the entire debt portfolio to a specialist charity to have it wiped out. The television segment showed how the little-known American market for buying and selling unpaid debt works. In this market, third-party collection agencies buy unpaid consumer and medical bills for a small part of their original value.
Undue Medical Debt was founded in 2014 by Craig Antico and Jerry Ashton. After Oliver’s production company transferred the accounts, the charity sent letters to the 9,000 people affected. A donation of $1 can help erase about $100 in medical debt at its original value.
The letters told them that their medical debts had been cleared completely, with no tax liability attached. The television broadcast brought the charity national attention and showed how donations could be used to remove the financial burden of medical bills, according to statements published by Undue Medical Debt. Both were former executives in the debt collection industry who used their knowledge of the market to help people get relief from medical debt. The charity selects debt portfolios linked to people earning less than twice the federal poverty line or facing serious financial hardship. Health policy analysts writing in The British Medical Journal noted that the stunt exposed a wider problem in the United States healthcare system. Unexpected medical emergencies can leave uninsured or underinsured patients facing long-term financial hardship and debt they cannot repay.