(The Center Square) – Pennsylvania lawmakers rallied at the Capitol on Tuesday to erase outstanding medical debts for thousands of residents.
House Bill 78 creates a new program in the Department of Health that would discharge debt for residents living at-or-below 400% of the federal poverty level – or up to $60,240 for a single person and $124,800 for a family of four.
Obligations totaling 5% or more of a person’s income would also qualify under the program. “The sad reality is that in Pennsylvania there are over a million people who have medical debt in collections,” said Rep. Tarik Khan, D-Philadelphia, one of the bill’s co-sponsors.
Khan, a nurse practitioner, noted that the issue of medical debt is a “hard conversation to have” with most patients. One in two Pennsylvanians have medical debt, while one in three struggle to pay their medical bills. One out of
Read more…
