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House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
House of Representatives
Session of 2025 - 2026
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | December 9, 2024 12:33 AM |
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| From: | Representative Arvind Venkat and Rep. Nathan Davidson, Rep. Tarik Khan, Rep. Bridget M. Kosierowski, Rep. Andrew Kuzma, Rep. Jim Rigby, Rep. Tim Twardzik |
| To: | All House members |
| Subject: | Pennsylvania Medical Debt Relief Program |
| Medical debt is a devastating burden on many residents of the Commonwealth. It is acutely prevalent among our most vulnerable low-income families, particularly women and people of color, detrimentally impacting their financial and overall well-being. Individuals should not have to drain their life savings just to receive quality health care. As champions of access to health care and, for three of us, as healthcare professionals, we believe that a unifying way to address our healthcare affordability crisis is to reduce the burden of medical debt on the most vulnerable Pennsylvanians. Medical debt has been called a “uniquely American problem,” so a uniquely American solution is needed. For this reason, we plan to propose establishing the Pennsylvania Medical Debt Relief Program. This program would target the medical debt of low-income Pennsylvanians drowning in this uniquely American burden and needing relief. Importantly, this program’s structure both carefully targets relief to those most in need in an equitable way and avoids the concern that debt relief may incentivize over-utilization of healthcare resources or purposefully not paying for healthcare services. This program will also improve the finances of healthcare institutions and providers, concentrated largely in rural Pennsylvania, who regularly carry debt on their balance sheet with little likelihood of payment. Such debt affects their ability to deliver on the necessary mission of providing care to those most in need and results in raising prices for all Pennsylvanians to make up the difference. Finally, and most importantly, this legislation will enact protections for all Pennsylvanians to ensure transparency on existing hospital charity care programs and assistance in applying for charity care to prevent the accumulation of new medical debt. This proposal is modeled on efforts at the local and state level that have leveraged government funds to expand the beneficial impact for thousands of residents. For example, in Pittsburgh, the City Council invested $1 million to alleviate their constituents’ medical debt through a program like we are proposing. For this price, the city can discharge $115 million of health care debt for 24,000 residents. Red and blue states like Arizona and New Jersey have also enacted programs to address medical debt relief in this manner. In the last legislative session, we passed the attached legislation on a bipartisan basis through the State House, and Governor Shapiro included this proposal within his fiscal year 2024-2025 budget. Please join us in co-sponsoring this legislation. Let us ensure that no one must choose between putting food on the table or getting the medical care that they need. |
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Memo Updated: December 9, 2024 12:34 AM