More Than 160,000 Clevelanders Get Medical Debt Relief Thanks to City Council, ARPA Funds | Cleveland

By Pune Media On May 2, 2025

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Mark Oprea

Councilman Kris Harsh was one of the architects of the legislation that, this spring, will remove medical debt from the accounts of 161,000 Clevelanders.

Those pesky, endless calls from debt collectors may stop coming in this month.

Cleveland City Council announced on Thursday that they have eliminated $165 million of medical debt for 161,481 Clevelanders, a push to help rectify years, or even decades, of unpaid bills for exorbitantly-priced exams or ER visits for those who can’t afford to pay.

Those who qualified have already or will receive a letter detailing the debt that’s been wiped away, council members said at a press conference. (Those who qualified had debt that’s over five percent of their annual household income or earn up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level.)

The average beneficiary had just over $1,000 in medical debt erased, though some saw hundreds of thousands in bills disappear.

That move, Council President Blaine Griffin told press, culminates a months-long initiative to use roughly $2 million in Biden-era American Rescue Plan Act dollars to lift the seemingly endless financial burden that the unseen costs of surgeries or tests place on hospital patients.

“A lot of times people see us invest in things and roads and buildings and institutions and other things, but this was an opportunity to invest directly in people,” he said. “Public money should serve the public; we’re focused on making every dollar count.”

Last year, City Council hired Undue Medical Debt (formerly RIP Medical Debt) to help buy hundreds of millions of dollars in debt from local hospitals and debt collection agencies. The latter often buys debt in bulk from hospitals like MetroHealth and the Cleveland Clinic, and in turn sells it on in the secondary market.

That’s how debt collectors make their money: by attaching interest on the debt files of patients that, for one reason or another, can’t pay for hundreds or thousands of dollars in doctor bills.

“Those calls never stop, you know: ‘I need my $500, I need my $800,’” Councilman Kris Harsh said. “Not only do they hound people for this debt, but they actually increase it because they throw an interest rate on top of it—because they’re trying to capitalize on their purchase of your debt.”

Harsh, who worked together with Councilman Charles Slife on co-sponsoring what became law, framed Thursday’s debt relief push as part of a pro-worker, pro-consumer wave of legislation at City Council and at the state level in recent weeks.

On Monday, City Council okayed a suite of laws that force any employer in the city with more than 15 employees to be completely clear on job postings about the salaries one can expect. Also, employers can’t ask jobseekers about what they made at their previous gig.

And, on April 3, the Hospital Price Transparency Act went into effect, a law that requires hospitals to list the base price for common medical services—allergy shots, strep tests, cancer screenings—on their websites.

Meaning: no more after-the-fact freak-outs over a Covid-Flu-RSV lab test or other basic exam.

“This law will empower Ohioans with clear, up-front information about the costs of medical care,” said State Rep. Ron Ferguson last month. “This is about the ability of patients to make informed decisions, shop for affordable options and avoid surprise bills that can devastate families.”

With the looming threat of the state elimination of Medicaid Expansion, which could take affordable healthcare away from 770,000 Ohioans, the ever-present question of affordable healthcare is at the forefront for many in the city.

And also in the surrounding suburbs, as Slife made clear: Undue helped eviscerate millions of dollars of debt from those in the Cleveland suburbs—really anyone who fit the income qualifications and had been a patient at a Cleveland hospital in a Cleveland ZIP code. That amounted to $3 million, according to Council, though relief from those debts was privately funded by Undue and not the city.

Zapping away those debts brought up other questions. What about legislation that forces local hospitals to tell you upfront what that blood test costs?

Relevant questions to Thursday’s announcement, Slife agreed.

“I think we all understand when I take my kids to the emergency room, I’m not asking how much things cost—I’m looking for medical care,” he said. “We’ve all been in a situation where we inherit some sort of medical debt not knowing what it’s going to be on the other end.”

Scene asked if City Council could legislate that policy into existence, if that Cleveland Clinic doctor can be pushed to inform you that combined Covid-Flu-RSV test will cost you $352 after insurance.

They deferred to Councilwoman Rebecca Maurer, who reminded everyone she was a consumer law attorney in her previous life.

“I mean, you know what it’s going to cost when you go buy a used car,” she said. “And essentially, because of the way our system works, state and federal laws govern that. There’s very little that the city’s allowed to do on top of that.”

It’s yet to be seen how exactly local providers will advertise the prices of their services in line with the new state law.

Letters have already gone out for Clevelanders who’ve had their debt wiped away. The remainder should see that confirmation, Council said, by the end of May.

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