Rally to forgive medical debt at Providence City Hall

The RI DSA is calling on PVD Mayor Smiley and the City Council to reject any tax agreement with Lifespan that doesn’t relieve patients’ medical debt...

Over a dozen people stood on the cold windy steps of Providence City Hall on Thursday to advocate for the City of Providence to include medical debt relief as part of its PILOT Agreement with Lifespan. I wrote about the launch of this effort here, but in short, the Rhode Island Democratic Socialists of America (RI DSA) is calling on Providence Mayor Brett Smiley and the Providence City Council to reject any tax agreement with Lifespan that doesn’t relieve patients’ medical debt and create public accountability for the hospital system. Lifespan, an extremely profitable non-profit located in Providence, is currently negotiating a PILOT (Payment In Lieu Of Taxes) with the city.

Over 50,000 residents of Rhode Island share a total burden of $72 million in medical debt, says the RI DSA, adding that “Lifespan, the operator of most hospitals in Providence, enjoys a nonprofit tax status even though it holds more than $3 billion in assets and pays its executives with salaries in the millions.

Specifically, Rhode Island DSA and a growing list of community organizations demand that Lifespan

1. forgive medical debt now and in the future;

2. end all harassment of patients in debt; and

3. reserve at least 51% of the seats on Lifespan’s board of directors for hospital workers and patients.

The speaking program was emceed by Alison Kenney, Chair of RI DSA’s Medicare for All Working Group. You can watch the video of the rally here. The sound is a little difficult due to the high winds:

“My job as a primary healthcare provider is to provide good quality care to people in this broken healthcare system that creates obstacles to care, including mountains of paperwork and middlemen upon middlemen who take money off the top,” said nurse practitioner Linda Eibel. “Our system is the world's most expensive healthcare system, which is ranked 30th globally, gave us a decrease in life expectancy, and an increase in maternal mortality.”

Eibel continued:

“But we are here today to talk about medical debt. In 2010, we were promised that everyone would have health insurance with the passage of the Affordable Care Act. We started seeing patients coming in who hadn't had care for decades, and all of a sudden they could get their mammograms and their colonoscopies and their pap tests. Then, after a couple of years, they started falling away because their premiums or deductibles became unaffordable.

“When care is unaffordable, it's avoided or delayed, and when that happens, the outcomes are always worse. The diabetes is uncontrolled, the blood pressure is uncontrolled, and the cancer is found too late. In Rhode Island, 2.9% of people are uninsured, but 28% of people are underinsured. These are people who are working. These are families that are working and their insurance is just plain unaffordable. 51% have deductibles $2,000 or higher. What that means is that you might as well not have insurance until you spend this money out of pocket.

“The average medical expense is about $2,500 a year in this state and more than 12% of Rhode Islanders received at least one bill last year of at least $500. When you go to the ER, you're not getting out of there for under a grand and that doesn't count the ambulance. I have had patients lose their homes because of medical debt. I have had patients in their seventies put off retirement because of medical debt and this is the only country where GoFundMe campaigns are the primary source of revenue to pay off your healthcare.

“It doesn't have to be this way. Healthcare corporations could give people information about what they are entitled to. They could agree not to sell medical debt ever and they could agree to never report it to credit bureaus. They could agree to abolish medical debt. The average medical debt in Rhode Island is $1,300. The amount of medical debt that Lifespan holds is a drop in the bucket for a corporation that pays four of its executives over $1 million a year and its CEO over $3 million a year. This amount of medical debt is a drop in the bucket to Lifespan, but it literally can mean life or death for the people whose debt would be erased. If Akron, Cleveland, Toledo, Chicago, New Orleans, Washington DC, and New York City can pledge to abolish medical debt, so can Providence.”

The rally also highlighted the need for a statewide Medicare-for-All, single-payer health insurance system in Rhode Island. Bishop Nicholas Knisely of the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island spoke about this.

“I support Medicare for All but more importantly I think we, as a people, ought to be retiring all medical debt. It's something dioceses have done. Churches around this country are buying medical debt for pennies on the dollar. For $20,000 they can dismiss $200,000 worth of debt, even millions of dollars of debt. It's a simple thing that people of faith can do to show support for people who've done nothing wrong except get sick in a country that doesn't have equitable healthcare solutions for people.

“As a person who runs businesses, I know how overwhelming the cost of providing healthcare for our employees is - how we strain to make full-time jobs available because of the cost of healthcare. Rhode Island could make itself an attractive place for businesses to come to if we had Medicare for All because we could make the cost of doing business lower because businesses would not have to provide healthcare. It would be provided justly for all the citizens in the state.”

Because of the wind, I lost some of Catherine Ibern’s story. Here’s what I have of it, edited for clarity.

“I wish I could say I was excited to be here today,” said Catherine Ibern, “but I'm not. I'm tired of begging for our needs and healthcare is a basic need. It should be a basic human right, like air and water. Do you know that there are currently over 500 people sleeping outside right now? Do you know that most people in this state are just one medical emergency away from losing everything - their house, their savings?

“One story I hear constantly from so many individuals is ‘I worked full time my entire life. I had a house. I had a life savings. I had a career. But through no fault of my own, I became sick or my partner became sick. Due to all the medical bills and constant medication, we had to choose life over a roof over our heads.

“Think about that.

“They had to choose to live but they lost control of where they live. This is avoidable. We have the funds but the funds are being sent somewhere else. I'm tired.

“I'm also tired of being sick. I know I don't look it, but I'm sick. I have been for the past eight years. At 32 years old, I came home from my full-time office job and for no reason at all, I was tired. Sarcoidosis is a rare inflammatory disease affecting the autoimmune response. 16 months ago I had a stroke. A little over a year before the stroke, I finally had access to Medicare, but not all of Medicare. It doesn't cover the doctors overseeing your care while you're in the hospital. It also doesn't cover a lot of the tests that they perform while you're in the hospital. I received a bill a couple of weeks ago for one doctor in particular. $13,000 for one doctor.

“I want to take a pause and reflect again on our homeless community. They're receiving bills for $87,000. There's a reason they're on the street. When their encampments are getting plowed down, where do you think they hold their medication? People are dying every day in this country. Over 800 people are dying every day because of healthcare debt and that can be avoided. Since my stroke, I had to be on blood thinners. The only way I was able to be released from the hospital was with blood thinners. Otherwise, I was a ticking time bomb. I went to the pharmacy hospital. Guess what, $800 please. I had insurance. I asked, ‘Do you have any discounts? Are there any coupons?’ Guess what I was told? ‘No. We cannot give you coupons because you are on a government program.’

“I have a question. I have a question for Governor McKee and all the state reps and senators. “How much our lives are worth to you? How much is mine worth? I'm just one crisis, one diagnosis, one more stroke, one more unexpected $800 a month medication away from losing it all.”

Also speaking were Providence City Councilmembers Justin Roias (Ward 4) and Miguel Sanchez (Ward 6), as well as RI DSA co-chair Tony Unger.