‘It actually happened to me’: Medical debt cancellation by local governments is real
When Amber Clapsaddle found out that she would have about $1,500 in medical debt canceled, she cried, posted a picture of the letter with the news on Facebook and called her husband.
Clapsaddle, 44, had heard several months before about efforts in Toledo, Ohio, where she and her family live, to wipe out medical debt. At the time, she said, she was “praying that I would randomly get a bill” canceled.
So when she got the letter in the mail in October, “I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “I was like, ‘oh my gosh, it actually happened to me.’”
The relief came after the debt had been hanging over her family for about five years. Clapsaddle’s household engages regularly with the healthcare system because her husband and some of her children have complex medical conditions.
But it wasn’t until Clapsaddle began the years-long process of being diagnosed with and managing fibromyalgia herself that her family started to fall behind on medical bills. “I’ve always been a very responsible person to pay my bills,” she said. At the time the household incurred the bill that was ultimately canceled, for an ultrasound for her daughter, Clapsaddle was working part-time as she strove to get her own condition under control.
“I became one of those people that just put the bill in the pile but knew it was there,” she said. “It caused a lot of anxiety.” Ultimately, getting the bill canceled “was a relief,” she said.
More: