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