Speaker 1: Do you want to be an American?
Speaker 2: Idio Scott's longshow back on seven hundred WLW fun fat.
Speaker 1: Here's a fun fact to start your busy day.
Speaker 2: The amount of money that we spend in healthcare in
Speaker 2: the United States has tripled since two thousand, So in
Speaker 2: less than a quarter century, less than twenty five years,
Speaker 2: the amount of money we spend on healthcare has tripled.
Speaker 2: So one point four trillion to five trillion, pretty close
Speaker 2: to triple, right. More than third of Ohio and struggled
Speaker 2: play her medical bills last month, the city of Cincinnati,
Speaker 2: and this is kind of like a side eye to
Speaker 2: Aftab who's running for mayor, So yeah, that's probably why.
Speaker 2: But gave a million and a half to nonprofit that
Speaker 2: buy his medical debt from hospitals. That wiped out some
Speaker 2: two hundred twenty million dollars in debt for about twelve
Speaker 2: thousand Cincinnati. So next up those state wide is Ohio's
Speaker 2: Medical Debt Fairness Act.
Speaker 1: What is that?
Speaker 2: Well, Ohio Representative Michelle Grimm out of Toledo, out of
Speaker 2: the Glass Cities here, she is a sponsor of House
Speaker 2: Bill two fifty seven.
Speaker 1: Michelle, how are you?
Speaker 3: I'm great, how are you Scott.
Speaker 1: I'm doing fine. All is well in the glass sit I.
Speaker 3: Presume, yeah, all as well?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 2: I had I think Gary Jeff Walker, one of our
Speaker 2: guys at work here, was driving through Toledo, was thinking
Speaker 2: to me, said I stopped and had a Pacos honky dog.
Speaker 2: And let me tell you something, if you're passing through
Speaker 2: child to stop at Tony Paco's and get some chili,
Speaker 2: get a honky dog. Much different than Cincinnati style, but
Speaker 2: pleasing none theless, all right, so medical debt has I
Speaker 2: think it's the still the leading source and has been
Speaker 2: for a while leading source on paid bills and credit
Speaker 2: reports for a long time now. In medical debt's like
Speaker 2: sixty percent of consumer debt on credit reports, which is incredible.
Speaker 2: So that those that's the rail that we're facing here.
Speaker 2: So what does House Bill two fifty seven do? What's
Speaker 2: your proposal to do?
Speaker 3: Sure? So House Still two fifty seven would do three
Speaker 3: key things. It would prohibit hospitals debt collectors from reporting
Speaker 3: on credit reports, it would ban wage gurnishment, and it
Speaker 3: would tap interest of medical debt ode to three percent,
Speaker 3: because right now we have a statutory eight percent interest,
Speaker 3: so that would cap that at three percent.
Speaker 2: Okay, So let's start with a three percent medical to
Speaker 2: The interest that you would pay right now on any
Speaker 2: medical bill is certainly higher than three percent, and that
Speaker 2: keeps up with inflation, presumably tied to maybe tied to
Speaker 2: inflation here, but typically how much of that debt?
Speaker 1: Are we talking? How much should people just paying interest
Speaker 1: on medical debt? Now?
Speaker 3: So I, you know, I think it's hard to gauge,
Speaker 3: but I would say that the average person has about
Speaker 3: the average person has medical debt has about twelve hundred dollars,
Speaker 3: and while we don't report under five hundred dollars and
Speaker 3: credit reports right now, that's taking away about the majority
Speaker 3: of people who have medical debt and not giving them
Speaker 3: a chance to repair their credit or purchase a home
Speaker 3: or even get a job, because credit reports are they
Speaker 3: continder people getting a job or getting an apartment, or
Speaker 3: getting a mortgage. So so that that leads a lot
Speaker 3: of people out.
Speaker 2: Well getting getting insurance for that met like car insurance
Speaker 2: for example.
Speaker 1: Everybody pulls your credit report.
Speaker 3: Now, yeah, for sure, And so our bill would prohibit
Speaker 3: any type of credit reporting and medical.
Speaker 2: Debt all right, So on that one of the one
Speaker 2: of the complaints you hear from the debt collection industry,
Speaker 2: which I can't imagine a lot of people siding with
Speaker 2: the debt collection industry, but it says, hey, listen, you're
Speaker 2: essentially encouraging people to be dead beats.
Speaker 1: Basically, what they're saying is that.
Speaker 2: If you take the conscious consequences away from people for
Speaker 2: non payment, that's going to lead the higher healthcare costs
Speaker 2: for everyone because people look at it going, well, I
Speaker 2: don't have to pay it. The government's going to and
Speaker 2: you know there's a moral hazard there obviously too, And
Speaker 2: that's that's a problem with universal healthcare is you know,
Speaker 2: well people just simply go to the emergency. If I
Speaker 2: don't have to pay for it, I'll overuse it. That's
Speaker 2: a theory.
Speaker 3: So you would still have to pay your bills, of course,
Speaker 3: because it would just not be on your credit report.
Speaker 3: But I would also argue that there's been studies that
Speaker 3: said medical debt is a poor indicator of paying other
Speaker 3: types of credit. So if you had credit cards or
Speaker 3: paying your mortgage, or paying your light bill, your electric bill,
Speaker 3: but if you have medical debt, that's a poor indicator
Speaker 3: whether you're going to pay other debts back. And people
Speaker 3: do you want to pay off their medical bills. Medical
Speaker 3: bills can be medical debt can be embarrassing, but it's
Speaker 3: not their fault. It's really a fault of a broken system.
Speaker 3: It's not a debt of luxury, is a debt of necessity.
Speaker 3: So that's what I would a viewback is that people
Speaker 3: people do want to pay their bills back, and putting
Speaker 3: these creditory practices in place hinders a lot of people
Speaker 3: from doing that.
Speaker 2: In that regard, Michelle Grim, is there a means test
Speaker 2: or income requirement? I mean, you know, it sounds all
Speaker 2: well and good that people do want to pay their
Speaker 2: debts off generally speaking, but how do we separate people
Speaker 2: who generally can't afford to pay versus those who simply
Speaker 2: say I'm not going to pay or choose not to pay.
Speaker 3: So I think that there when you look at the studies,
Speaker 3: it's a lot of people who cannot afford to pay,
Speaker 3: a lot of people do want to pay their bills,
Speaker 3: but they simply can't afford it. They're they're choosing between
Speaker 3: putting food on the table, or paying their their electric bill,
Speaker 3: or paying their mortgage, or paying their medical debt off.
Speaker 3: So it's it is a lot of people who don't
Speaker 3: have any savings or anything like that. A lot of
Speaker 3: people don't have a thousand dollars for emergency and that's
Speaker 3: why we're putting people in a bind with medical debt.
Speaker 3: But we want to help people with House book fifty seven.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is Michelle Grim she's out of Toledo. House
Speaker 2: Bill two fifty seven. She's go sponsoring this one to
Speaker 2: help people with medical debt because one in three Ohioans
Speaker 2: carry some sort of medical debts and number one cause
Speaker 2: of bankrow. I think we're the top two costs of
Speaker 2: bankruptcy in the United States, but one drives the other.
Speaker 2: Joblessness would be number one, and health insurance bankruptcy is
Speaker 2: another one, and I think those two go hand in
Speaker 2: hand because for a lot of people, their jobs and
Speaker 2: healthcare a tied together, which is part of the problem.
Speaker 2: This would limit medical interest to what you say, three
Speaker 2: percent a year. You can't guard someone's wages for medical
Speaker 2: debt collection, and hospitals and providers can't report medical debt
Speaker 2: to credit agencies right now, and I think in the
Speaker 2: last few years were reformed.
Speaker 1: It used to be.
Speaker 2: I believe Michelle, unpaid medical bills were kicked over to
Speaker 2: credit reporting agencies after like sixty or on hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty days and now it's a full year.
Speaker 1: Correct, correct?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, I mean even the credit industry has said, hey,
Speaker 2: you know, we've got to we've got we've got to
Speaker 2: ease back a little bit here, mean after a full year.
Speaker 2: Now does that mean that people aren't making any payments whatsoever?
Speaker 2: If you pay a little bit of money, does that
Speaker 2: keep you from being reported to credit agencies? How does
Speaker 2: that work?
Speaker 1: Or is that what this what two fifty seven seeks
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 3: So I think it depends. I think typically I think
Speaker 3: if you're making payments that it would not be reported.
Speaker 3: But I think in some instances you will see reports
Speaker 3: that like people are making payments or maybe they fell
Speaker 3: behind so and you know what I was talking about before,
Speaker 3: they maybe sell behind one or two months and then
Speaker 3: it gets reported on the credit report. So you know,
Speaker 3: the system isn't really fair for consumers, and we want
Speaker 3: to make it a little fair for people to get ahead,
Speaker 3: for people to have a fighting chance. So you know,
Speaker 3: I think that a lot of the arguments against this
Speaker 3: too is we around wage garnishments. I do want your
Speaker 3: listeners to look up this article from Signal, Ohio about
Speaker 3: a rural hospital of Logan County who has who has
Speaker 3: sued twenty seven hundred patients in the last two years. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and a lot of their a lot of the judgments
Speaker 3: in court were wage gardishments. So people are paying up
Speaker 3: to twenty five percent of their They're getting up to
Speaker 3: twenty five percent of their checks garnished their payroll checks,
Speaker 3: plus they're paying that eight percent interest.
Speaker 1: So that's that's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: I think most people listening, Wow, Okay, I'm not quite
Speaker 2: sure I want the state medical bills. At the same time, like,
Speaker 2: how am I supposed to live if i'm that's almost
Speaker 2: like child support? Right in child support, you had a
Speaker 2: conscious shod have a child, and you provide for your child.
Speaker 2: That's a different matter than Hey, I just got sick,
Speaker 2: and maybe I got sick because it's something at work
Speaker 2: or I fell or something along the way, and it
Speaker 2: happens all of us at some point or another. And
Speaker 2: now we're taking a quarter of your wages. That seems confiscate.
Speaker 2: How can you live on the other seventy five percent?
Speaker 3: And can I go back to what you just said?
Speaker 3: So we're not again, we're not suggesting that the state
Speaker 3: is paying medical bills. We're just saying we're going to
Speaker 3: have these parameters of credit reports, wage garnership, and interest rates.
Speaker 3: So I just wanted to kind of, yeah.
Speaker 1: That's fair.
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 2: I was referring more to what we did in Cincinnati
Speaker 2: not long ago when council approved a million and a
Speaker 2: half to a nonprofit that collected money and wiped out
Speaker 2: about two hundred twenty million debt for twelve thousand Cincinnatians
Speaker 2: and just buying the debt from the credit companies.
Speaker 3: So I actually did that in Toledo about it'll be
Speaker 3: three years ago. So Toledo kind of led the way
Speaker 3: for cities with the first one, and so we actually
Speaker 3: eliminated debt for about one hundred and twelve thousand people
Speaker 3: around the region, including forty three thousand Lucas County residents.
Speaker 3: And that no profit is undo medical debt. They do
Speaker 3: great work, so and they negotiate directly with the hospitals.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I'd contemplate that one because this is outside
Speaker 2: of your scope as a state lawmaker, Michelle Grimm. But
Speaker 2: the beef I have, like, for example, the government shutdown
Speaker 2: over Obamacare and the ACA, you know, we're fighting over subsidies.
Speaker 2: The problem it's not not healthcare. We're so we're taking
Speaker 2: money from a group of taxpayers and transferring it to
Speaker 2: another money of pad taxpayers without addressing the problem in
Speaker 2: Congress for a long time. And we would need all
Speaker 2: this stuff if we would just reform healthcare properly instead
Speaker 2: of having Democrats and Republicans fight each other and into
Speaker 2: this insane stuff. I mean, Obamacare, it makes it doesn't
Speaker 2: make get affordable. Uh, it's extremely expensive, is the problem?
Speaker 2: Affism is no where you're just here, you're subsidizing something
Speaker 2: that's extremely expended. Let let's figure out why we're paying
Speaker 2: you know, three times more than most double what most
Speaker 2: countries are for less health care doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, no, I would absolutely agree with that, and
Speaker 3: I would I would say that a lot of people
Speaker 3: in the healthcare space looking at the core problem, which
Speaker 3: is our work at healthcare system which it would absolutely
Speaker 3: agree with that. And so I know we're here not
Speaker 3: to talk about and do. But what what what they're
Speaker 3: able to do is they're able to purchase that pennies
Speaker 3: on the dollar from hospital systems or second second, the
Speaker 3: secondary market. But you know, people do uh people have
Speaker 3: you know I've gotten I've gotten a lot of emails
Speaker 3: and a lot of calls saying like I got a
Speaker 3: letter from on new medical debt. Thank you very much.
Speaker 3: It really did help a lot of people. But yes,
Speaker 3: you are correct, it does not solve the broken healthcare system, right,
Speaker 3: and you know that's what you know, that's what we
Speaker 3: need to keep working on. And so bills like House
Speaker 3: Bill to fifty seven, they make the rules a little
Speaker 3: bit fairer, but we still have a lot of work
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you mentioned Logan County Small and Logan Counties right
Speaker 2: in our listing areas in the I think around the
Speaker 2: where the Armstrong Space, you know, WAPA Canetta up that way. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: about an hour an hour and a half hour forty
Speaker 2: minutes from us here in Cincinnati, So Logan County pastor,
Speaker 2: and if you're going up north to Toledo, for example,
Speaker 2: so in that county you said that you know, they're
Speaker 2: garnishing people's wages and like, and I kind of get
Speaker 2: that in a sense is I don't know if they're
Speaker 2: being confiscatory and it's you know, the evil capitalists twirling
Speaker 2: his mustache in the corner lighting a cigar with one
Speaker 2: thousand dollars bills. But in some sense, hospitals, and especially
Speaker 2: rural hospitals are under struggles right now. We're having a
Speaker 2: number of them closed as a result of the healthcare
Speaker 2: system which is not going to serve anyone in those areas.
Speaker 2: How do you ensure they still get fair payment while
Speaker 2: protecting the patients from excessive debt collection practices.
Speaker 3: So I think what's going to hurt our rule hospitals
Speaker 3: in the long run is the cuts to Medicaid and
Speaker 3: Medicare and also the increased costs because the aca of
Speaker 3: the subsidies may go away. So that's going to be
Speaker 3: really where they're going to hit get hit the hardest.
Speaker 3: It's not gonna be because they can't put it on
Speaker 3: our current report or they can't garnish wages. A lot
Speaker 3: of hospitals actually don't garnish wages or soothe their patients.
Speaker 3: This is actually a pretty aggressive practice with this one hospital,
Speaker 3: because actually a lot of hospitals don't do that. They
Speaker 3: you know, tend to try to work with the patient
Speaker 3: or they or they send it to debt collection. But
Speaker 3: not every but not every hospital does that. A couple
Speaker 3: of the hospitals in the area in the state have
Speaker 3: said that this doesn't this build has two fifty seven
Speaker 3: doesn't really affect us. It doesn't affect our operations. So
Speaker 3: but so yeah, that's what I would say, is.
Speaker 2: That maybe it's just maybe more like the rural I mean,
Speaker 2: because you look at rural areas that are losing population
Speaker 2: and they've got one hospital or clinic and now you've
Speaker 2: got fewer people in there. So I get the model.
Speaker 2: Whereas in Cincinnati and Dayton, Toledo, in bigger cities, you
Speaker 2: can absorb those costs, but better you have more people
Speaker 2: to draw.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but again, I think that what's coming down the
Speaker 3: pipeline here is our cuts to Medicaid and our cuts
Speaker 3: to Medicare and the AC subsidies going away is really
Speaker 3: going to hurt our rural hospital systems. Not prohibiting putting
Speaker 3: medical debta credible.
Speaker 2: It's a hospital two fifty seven, and medical debt is
Speaker 2: a crisis in America, has been for a long time
Speaker 2: of about sixty percent of our consumer debt. This would
Speaker 2: limit the interest on that to three percent, a heared
Speaker 2: capit of three percent interest, ban wage garnishment for medical
Speaker 2: debt collections, and stop hospitals and providers and debt collectors
Speaker 2: from reporting that debt to credit agencies provided you're paying something.
Speaker 2: I mean, isn't it safe to say In the end,
Speaker 2: most hospitals gey, hey, listen, I owe all this money
Speaker 2: and here's what I make. We've got to work on
Speaker 2: a payment plan, whether it's you know, twenty bucks a
Speaker 2: month or something like that, which you'll never touch it,
Speaker 2: but at least I'm giving you something. Does that satisfy
Speaker 2: most hospitals if put the effort.
Speaker 3: In so, you know, I think I can't speak for
Speaker 3: the hospital systems, but certainly a lot of the hospital
Speaker 3: systems do you work out payment plans. They also offer
Speaker 3: charity care options. People can ask for charity care options,
Speaker 3: and I would really encourage folks to do that. Just
Speaker 3: kind of look at all of your options. So if
Speaker 3: you do have medical debt or bills you can't pay,
Speaker 3: ask questions. So this is kind of my call to
Speaker 3: action for everybody. Ask questions. Ask you know, hey, why
Speaker 3: was I charged this? Or can I set up a
Speaker 3: paynut plan? Or hey, I can't afford this right now?
Speaker 3: So I would say keep you know, negotiate with the
Speaker 3: hospital or the deck collection agency, and just make sure
Speaker 3: that you're uh negotiating that way because you you do
Speaker 3: have negotiating power and you can work on uh making
Speaker 3: sure that you you do you do keep up with
Speaker 3: your bills and you don't fall behind and it does
Speaker 3: go on your credit report until you know, until just pass.
Speaker 3: So so so yeah, I would say, like, you know,
Speaker 3: just work, you know, talk, talk to the hospitals, look
Speaker 3: at your medical bills, ask questions, and you know the
Speaker 3: hospitals should be happy to work with you.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Uh, Michelle, you have biopartian sport for those a bipartsionation.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, absolutely. It touches every So my my joint
Speaker 3: sponsor is Representative Jean Schmidt. So, uh, you know it
Speaker 3: touches everybody's district, everybody's district. Yeah, so you know it's
Speaker 3: not just rural districts or urban districts or suburban district
Speaker 3: is everybody's district and everybody everybody knows someone who has
Speaker 3: had medical debt or has medical debt currently. And you know, again,
Speaker 3: you want to make sure that the playing field is
Speaker 3: a little fair for people, and we want to make
Speaker 3: sure people get ahead and not keep them down. And
Speaker 3: I think the House will two fifty seven. Uh. While
Speaker 3: it doesn't fix everything, it makes us a little bit
Speaker 3: closer to uh a fair system.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it makes sense.
Speaker 2: Jeene Schmid in the sixty second district, so you know,
Speaker 2: fairly rural area is there too, Claremont County, So it
Speaker 2: has urban and rural support.
Speaker 1: And it's bipartisan, which I like a lot.
Speaker 2: And it also helps people and it doesn't seem to
Speaker 2: unfairly incentivize someone not to pay their bills, which which
Speaker 2: I like. She is Michelle Grimm, Democrat at Toledo House
Speaker 2: Bill fifty spence two fifty seven, along with Genie Schmidt
Speaker 2: here in Claremont County, and I wish all the best.
Speaker 2: Thanks again for coming on the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Scott be Well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we can talk more about this too. And I
Speaker 2: know there's people that just dig their heels and go,
Speaker 2: oh my god, it's more it's more welfare for Yeah.
Speaker 2: The problem is this. You know we have now double
Speaker 2: we spend a triple rather the amount of money we
Speaker 2: spend on healthcare. From two thousand to today, the number
Speaker 2: has tripled. And you know when you have sixty percent
Speaker 2: of consumer debt on credit reports, it is because of
Speaker 2: medical issues medical bills that people can't pay, and a
Speaker 2: declining number of businesses are offering health insurance that is
Speaker 2: a catastrophe. Maybe you're feeling that yourself and your family,
Speaker 2: your thoughts five one, three, seven, four nine, seven thousand
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