Speaker 1: Don't want to be in American.
Speaker 2: Scott's long show 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 in the fall, the city of Cincinnati
Speaker 2: gave money to wipe up help wipeout medical debt. Kind
Speaker 2: of a controversial story, but that was done just a
Speaker 2: few months ago as a matter of fact. So next up, though,
Speaker 2: state wide, is Ohio's Medical Debt Fairness Act.
Speaker 1: What is that? Well?
Speaker 2: Ohio Representative Michelle Grimm out of Toledo, out of the
Speaker 2: Glass Cities here, she has a sponsor of House Bill
Speaker 2: 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 City?
Speaker 3: I 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 having through Toledo, was thinking
Speaker 2: to me, so 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 the loss. All right, So medical debt has
Speaker 2: I think it's the still the leading source and has
Speaker 2: been for a while leading source on paid bills and
Speaker 2: credit reports for a long time now. In medical debt's
Speaker 2: like sixty percent of consumer debt on credit reports, which
Speaker 2: is incredible. So that those that's the rail that we're
Speaker 2: facing here. So what does House Bill two fifty seven do?
Speaker 2: What's your proposal to do? Sure?
Speaker 3: So House Bill two fifty seven would do three key things.
Speaker 3: It would prohibit hospitals debt collectors from reporting on credit reports,
Speaker 3: It would ban wage gurnishment, and it would cap interest
Speaker 3: of medical debt ode to three percent, because right now
Speaker 3: we have a statutory eight percent interest, so that would
Speaker 3: 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, certainly higher than three percent, and that keeps
Speaker 2: up with inflation, presumably tied to maybe tied to inflation
Speaker 2: here but typically how much of that debt? Are we
Speaker 2: talking about howmuch should people just pay an interest on
Speaker 2: a medical debt?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 3: So I you know, I think that'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 getting insurance for that metal like car
Speaker 2: insurance for example.
Speaker 1: Everybody pulls your credit report now, yeah.
Speaker 3: For sure. And so our bill would prohibit any type
Speaker 3: of credit reporting and medical debt.
Speaker 2: All right, So on that one of the one of
Speaker 2: the complaints you hear from the debt collection industry, which
Speaker 2: I can't imagine a lot of people signing with the
Speaker 2: debt collection industry, but it says, hey, listen, you're essentially
Speaker 2: encouraging people to be dead beats Basically, what they're saying
Speaker 2: is that if you take a constant consequences away from
Speaker 2: people for non payment, that's going to lead the higher
Speaker 2: healthcare costs for everyone because people look at it going, well,
Speaker 2: I don't have to pay if the government's going to
Speaker 2: and you know there's a moral hazard there obviously too,
Speaker 2: And that's that's the problem with universal healthcare is you know, well,
Speaker 2: people just simply go to the emergent if I don't
Speaker 2: have to pay for it all over use.
Speaker 1: If that's a.
Speaker 3: Theory, so you would still have to pay your bills,
Speaker 3: of course, because it would just not be on your
Speaker 3: credit report. But I would also argue that there's been
Speaker 3: studies that said medical debt is a poor indicator of
Speaker 3: paying other types of credit. So if you had credit cards,
Speaker 3: or paying your mortgage, or paying your light bill, your
Speaker 3: electric bill, but if you have medical debt, that's a
Speaker 3: poor indicator whether you're going to pay other debts back.
Speaker 3: And people do want to pay off their medical bills.
Speaker 3: Medical bills can be medical debt can be embarrassing, but
Speaker 3: it's not their fault. It's really a fault of a
Speaker 3: broken system. It's not a debt of luxury. It is
Speaker 3: a debt of necessity. So that's what I would argue back,
Speaker 3: is that people people do want to pay their bills back,
Speaker 3: and putting these creditory packs practices in place hinders a
Speaker 3: lot of people 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: long good that people do want to pay their debts
Speaker 2: off generally speaking, But how do we separate people who
Speaker 2: generally can't afford to pay versus those who simply say
Speaker 2: 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. There 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 an emergency, and
Speaker 3: that's why we're putting people in a bind with medical debt.
Speaker 3: But we want to help people.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, this is Michelle Grim she's out of Toledo
Speaker 2: House Bill two fifty seven. She's co sponsoring this one
Speaker 2: to help people with medical debt, because one in three
Speaker 2: Ohio ons carries some sort of medical debts. The number
Speaker 2: one cause of bankrow, I think with the top two
Speaker 2: cost of bankruptcy in the United States, but one drives
Speaker 2: the other. Job blessness would be number one, and health
Speaker 2: insurance bankruptcy is another one, and I think those two
Speaker 2: go hand in hand because for a lot of people,
Speaker 2: their jobs and healthcare tied together, which is part of
Speaker 2: the problem. This would limit medical interest to what you say,
Speaker 2: three percent a year. You can't guarn someone's wages for
Speaker 2: medical debt collection, and hospitals and providers can't report medical
Speaker 2: debt to credit agencies right now. And I think in
Speaker 2: the last few years were reformed. 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 one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty days, and now it's a full year. Correct, correct, Yeah, So,
Speaker 2: I mean even the credit industry has said, hey, you know,
Speaker 2: we've got to got we got to ease back a
Speaker 2: little bit here maan after a fully. Now does that
Speaker 2: mean that people aren't making any payments whatsoever? If you
Speaker 2: pay a little bit of money, does that keep you
Speaker 2: from being reported to credit agencies? How does that work?
Speaker 2: Or is that with this what two fifty seven seeks
Speaker 2: 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 around wage garnishments. I do want your listeners
Speaker 3: to look up this article from Signal, Ohio about a
Speaker 3: rural hospital in Logan County who has who has sued
Speaker 3: 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 garnishment. 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, So.
Speaker 1: 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 of medical bills. At the
Speaker 2: same time, like, how am I supposed to live if
Speaker 2: i'm that's almost like child support.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: In child support, you had a consciousution have a child,
Speaker 2: and you provide for your child. That's a different matter
Speaker 2: than Hey, I just got sick, and maybe I got
Speaker 2: sick because this is something at work or I feil
Speaker 2: or something along the way. All of us at some
Speaker 2: point or another. And now that we're taking a quarter
Speaker 2: of your wages, that seems confiscate. How can you live
Speaker 2: on the other seventy five percent?
Speaker 3: And I 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 guarnership, and interest rates.
Speaker 3: So I just wanted to kind of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fair.
Speaker 2: I was I was referring more to what we did
Speaker 2: in Cincinnati. Not long ago when council approved a million
Speaker 2: and a half to a nonprofit that collected money and
Speaker 2: wiped out about two hundred twenty million debt for twelve
Speaker 2: thousand Cincinnatians 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. County was the first one, and so we
Speaker 3: actually eliminated debt for about one hundred and twelve thousand
Speaker 3: people around the region, including forty three thousand Lucas County residents.
Speaker 3: And that no profit is undue medical debt. They do
Speaker 3: great work, so and they negotiate directly with the hospitals.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I 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 at
Speaker 2: our subsidy is the problem. It's not not healthcare. We're
Speaker 2: so we're taking money from a group of taxpayers and
Speaker 2: transferring it to another money of ped taxpayers without addressing
Speaker 2: the problem in Congress for a long time, and we
Speaker 2: would need all this stuff, if we would just reform
Speaker 2: healthcare properly instead of having Democrats and Republicans fight each
Speaker 2: other and do this insane stuff. I mean, Obamacare, it
Speaker 2: makes it doesn't make it affordable. It's extremely expensive. Is
Speaker 2: the problem. Afford is a misnomer. You're just you're you're
Speaker 2: subsidizing something that's extremely expended. Let's figure out why we're
Speaker 2: paying you know, three times more than most double what
Speaker 2: most countries are for less health care.
Speaker 1: It 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 broken healthcare system, which it would absolutely agree
Speaker 3: with that. And so I know we're here not to
Speaker 3: talk about and do. But what what they're able to
Speaker 3: do is they're able to purchase that pennies on the
Speaker 3: dollar from hospital systems or second second, the secondary market.
Speaker 3: But you know, people do uh? People have you know?
Speaker 3: I've gotten I've gotten a lot of emails and a
Speaker 3: lot of calls saying like I got a letter from
Speaker 3: New Medical Debt, thank you very much. It really did
Speaker 3: help a lot of people. But yes, you are correct,
Speaker 3: and does not solve the brokenhair health care 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 Canata 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 close 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 gonna hurt our rule hospitals in
Speaker 3: the long run is the cuts to Medicaid and Medicare
Speaker 3: and also the increased costs because the ACA seven, the
Speaker 3: subsidies may go away. So that's going to be really
Speaker 3: where they're going to hit get hit the hardest. It's
Speaker 3: not gonna be because they can't put it on our
Speaker 3: current report or they can't garnish wages. A lot of
Speaker 3: hospitals actually don't garnish wages or soothe their patients. This
Speaker 3: 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 collections. Right,
Speaker 3: but not every but not every hospital does that. Couples
Speaker 3: of hospitals in the area in the state have said
Speaker 3: that this doesn't this build hos those 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.
Speaker 2: Is that maybe it's just maybe more like the rural
Speaker 2: I mean, because you look at rural areas that are
Speaker 2: losing population and they've got one hospital or clinic and
Speaker 2: now you've got fewer people in there. So I get
Speaker 2: the model. Whereas in Cincinnati and Dayton, Toledo, in bigger cities,
Speaker 2: you can absorb those costs, but better you have more
Speaker 2: people 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 stubsidies going away. It is
Speaker 3: really going to hurt our rural hospital systems. Not prohibiting
Speaker 3: putting medical debta credible.
Speaker 2: It's a house built two fifty seven, and medical debt
Speaker 2: is a crisis in America, has been for a long time.
Speaker 1: Makes up about sixty percent of our consumer debt.
Speaker 2: This would limit the interest on that to three percent
Speaker 2: of here capita three percent interest, ban age garnishment for
Speaker 2: medical debt collections, and stop hospitals and providers and debt
Speaker 2: collectors from reporting that debt to credit agencies provided you're
Speaker 2: paying something. I mean, isn't it safe to say in
Speaker 2: the end, most hospitals, hey listen, I owe all this
Speaker 2: money and here's what I make. We've got to work
Speaker 2: on a payment plan, whether it's you know, twenty bucks
Speaker 2: a 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 in.
Speaker 3: So, you know, I think I can't speak for the
Speaker 3: hospital systems, but certainly a lot of the hospital systems
Speaker 3: do you work out payment plans. They also offer charity care options.
Speaker 3: People can ask for charity care options, and I would
Speaker 3: really encourage folks to do that kind of look at
Speaker 3: all of your options. So if you if you do
Speaker 3: have medical debt or bills you can't pay, ask questions.
Speaker 3: So this is kind of my call to action for everybody.
Speaker 3: Ask questions. Ask you know, hey why was I charged this?
Speaker 3: Or can I set up a paynut plan? Or hey
Speaker 3: I can't afford this right now? So I would say
Speaker 3: keep you know, negotiate with the hospital or the deck
Speaker 3: collection agency, and just make sure that you're uh negotiating
Speaker 3: that way, because you you do have negotiating power and
Speaker 3: you can work on uh making sure that you you
Speaker 3: do you do keep up with your bills and you
Speaker 3: don't fall behind and it does go on your credit
Speaker 3: report until you know, until just tass so so so yeah,
Speaker 3: I would say, like, you know, just work, you know, talk,
Speaker 3: talk to the hospitals, look at your medical bills, ask questions,
Speaker 3: and you know the hospitals should be happy to work
Speaker 3: with you.
Speaker 2: Right, Uh, Michelle that you have biopartisan sport for those
Speaker 2: are bipartiination.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, absolutely, it touches every So my my joint
Speaker 3: sponsor is Representative Jeane Schmidt. So uh, I you know,
Speaker 3: it touches everybody's district, everybody's district. Yeah, so you know,
Speaker 3: it's not just rural districts or urban districts or suburban districts.
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: we 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 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: Geene Schmid in the sixty second district, so you know,
Speaker 2: fairly rural area is there too, Claremont County. So uh
Speaker 2: it has urban and rural support and and it's bipartisan,
Speaker 2: which I like a lot. And it also helps people
Speaker 2: and it doesn't seem to unfairly uh insteadive by someone
Speaker 2: not to pay their bills, which I like. She is
Speaker 2: Michelle Grimm, Democrat at Toledo Hospital fifty spence two fifty seven,
Speaker 2: along with Janie Schmidt here in Claremont County, and I
Speaker 2: wish all the best, thanks again for coming on the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you Scott so too long didn't read. We have
Speaker 2: a government buying back medical debt from pennies on the
Speaker 2: Dottarm to discharge that debt for Ohioans, while the other
Speaker 2: side of the government causes our healthcare insurance to be
Speaker 2: so cost prohibitive people go into debt for it. One hand,
Speaker 2: I don't know breaking the other so to speak. I
Speaker 2: don't know what to make of this. Just address the
Speaker 2: core issue about that, not at the state level, but
Speaker 2: at the federal level. We've got a news update. We'll
Speaker 2: switch it up Bengals at Buffalo this weekend. Austin Elmore
Speaker 2: here from ESPN fifteen thirty. We'll talk about that and
Speaker 2: Kyle Schwarber Watch as well on seven hundred w weld