Witnesses urge Vermont to adopt medical-debt relief model after Rhode Island results

Vermont lawmakers heard testimony on S.27 on medical-debt relief, with witnesses urging the committee to adopt a model similar to Rhode Island’s program and outlining implementation, outreach and credit-report implications.

The Treasurer for the state of Rhode Island told the committee that the Rhode Island legislature allocated $1 million to launch a medical-debt buy-down program that contracted with the nonprofit Undo Medical Debt. “We’ve been able to buy, over $7,000,000 of medical debt for just under a hundred thousand dollars,” the Treasurer said, and added the state has impacted “over 2,000 folks” who will receive notification that their debt has been released.

The bill’s proponents told legislators S.27 would use income or debt-to-income thresholds to identify beneficiaries automatically rather than rely on an application process. The Treasurer described Rhode Island’s eligibility rules as automatic for people meeting income and debt-share criteria (the state used a threshold tied to the federal poverty level and a metric of medical debt as a share of annual income) and said the state paid primarily for older debts, which are cheaper to purchase from…