01/24/2025
First Mennonite Church is leading a community-wide effort to partner with non-profit Undue Medical Debt (UMD) in support of their work to relieve medical debt for the most vulnerable – people with below 4x the poverty line or who have debts that are 5% or more of their annual income. People cannot apply individually to have their medical debt erased. Instead, UMD works with hospitals and physicians who sell them large, bundled portfolios of debt of those most vulnerable, which allows UMD make a large impact, erasing the debt of thousands of people at once.
From January 26 – March 16, 2025, we are inviting faith partners and the broader community to help raise $20,000, which will provide $3.1 million in medical debt relief to financially vulnerable people in 15 counties in East Central Illinois. Our goal is to raise at least $20,000, with First Mennonite matching every dollar up to $10,000. Donations are tax deductible, with 100% applied to cancelling debt. Since 2014, Undue Medical Debt has relieved nearly $15 billion in medical debt for over 9 million people nationally. They have a 100%, 4-star rating from Charity Navigator.
The 15 counties included in this campaign: Champaign, Douglas, Vermilion, Iroquois, Edgar, Clark, Coles, Cumberland, Shelby, Moultrie, Macon, Piatt, De Witt, McLean, and Ford.
WHY? Medical debt has become a defining feature of the U.S. health care system. In the past five years, over 100 million adults in the United States have had medical debt, with more than $220 billion owed, including 44% of people who are insured. In Illinois, more than 1.75 million residents carry an estimated $4 billion of erasable medical debt. In Coles, Vermilion and Macon counties, 20% to 30% of residents are living with medical debt and have been assigned to a debt collection agency.
Although the State of Illinois included money for medical debt relief in its current budget, more funds are needed for a greater impact. In the spirit of the Bible’s Jubilee Year, which celebrates debt forgiveness as an act of compassion and justice, First Mennonite Church seeks to provide medical debt relief as love in action and an appropriate response to our current health care system.
Donate to the campaign at: https://tinyurl.com/EC-IL-Medical-Debt-Relief
Learn more about medical debt: https://fmc-cu.org/learn-about-medical-debt/
