After launching a nonprofit that eliminated more than $10 billion in medical debt in the U.S., a Navy veteran seeks to ease the debt burden of his former military colleagues.
Jerry Ashton leveraged his experience in the debt collection industry to launch Undue Medical Debt, formerly known as RIP Medical Debt, in 2014. By the time it stopped in 2020, the nonprofit had already purchased billions in medical debt across the county.
Now he hopes to do the same through his new organization End Veteran Debt, this time targeting fellow veterans, who he says are uniquely burdened with debt.
“The intent of End Veteran Debt is exactly that. It’s a double mission. Obviously, one is to end veteran debt and the other is to reduce veteran suicide, which we consider inseparable,” Ashton said.
Although the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) covers medical treatment for veterans related to their military service, they may have to pay for other unrelated services or if the VA contracts with another company. Some may also go to non-VA facilities incorrectly, assuming the VA could foot the bill.
Veterans collectively owe more than $382 million in medical debt in 2021, according to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), impacting 875,000 veterans.
The CFPB also reported that it had 5,000 complaints from veterans about medical debt from 2018 to 2021, representing 10 percent of all calls about medical debt over that period.
The VA has sought to ease the burden of medical debt by implementing new rules that only authorize it to report the debt to credit bureaus if it has exhausted collection efforts, if the veteran is not significantly disabled or income restricted, and if the debt is over $25.
Medical debt, however, is generally less of an issue for veterans, who primarily struggle to deal with credit card debt and other types of financial debt.
According to Ashton, who served in the Navy during the 1950s, young service members are the main targets of “predatory debt.”
“All you have to do is drive around a military base. You’ll see the new cars and the newest auto loans, you’ll see the payday loans, you’ll see all kinds of scam deals. Maybe they don’t call it that, but the way they treated the veteran is,” Ashton said.
A lot of this has to do with their youth, Ashton noted, as many end up using their first paychecks on big purchases, like cars, because they “didn’t know what they were doing.” He also cited payroll loans as a frequent source of debt for this group.
“The amount of money or salaries that are paid to the military right now are not really enough for the financial reality in which we live. So we will always have people closer to poverty,” Ashton said.
The Wounded Warriors Project (WWP) said more than 9 in 10 of its veterans have debt beyond mortgage payments and more than half live paycheck to paycheck.
And WWP, which helps provide physical and mental health care to veterans, also noted that more than 43 percent of its veterans cannot afford an emergency expense of $1,000 or more.
Undue Medical Debt alleviates patients’ debts by negotiating with hospitals to purchase outstanding expenses for pennies on the dollar. With his goal of addressing all different forms of veteran debt, Ashton is aware that his latest organization is tackling a more complex problem.
“It’s definitely granular,” Ashton admitted, but noted that Undue Medical Debt’s work “wasn’t that easy at first either.” It took his previous organization six years to achieve its goal of abolishing a billion dollars, but by the time it was 10 years old, this amount had already grown more than tenfold.
End Veteran Debt aims to abolish $80 million in outstanding debt, $1 million for each year since D-Day, through a campaign Ashton called “Debt Day.”
The debt elimination mechanism is similar to the Undue Medical Debt method. The money coming into the organization will go toward locating debts and ensuring they are erased, although End Veteran Debt is outsourcing this work to ForgiveCo, a public benefit corporation that partners with nonprofits and businesses to buy debts for pennies on the dollar. dollar and forgive them.
ForgiveCo was founded by Craig Antico, also co-founder of Undue Medical Debt.
“I’m starting from scratch with Craig,” Ashton said. “When I left, I retired from [board of Undue Medical Debt], should focus strictly on veterans. So, Craig had an overview of how to take care of the public’s debt. My focus was and is on the veterans.”
The year-long “Debt Day” fundraising campaign marks the first step in the End Veteran Debt effort.
Reflecting on the early days of undue medical debt, Ashton said, “We simply no longer magically acquire the debt that we can magically acquire a veteran’s. So fundraising is needed, but we decided to build it around the theme of D-Day. Liberation, the Allies went to the beach to liberate Europe. Our idea is to go to the beach, the financial beach, and free the veterans.”
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
