Photo: Alexander Grey | Unsplash
For 15 years, Donna and Gary Lindabury of North Carolina lived with the financial equivalent of an anvil over their heads: a medical debt owed to a nonprofit hospital that at one point reached $200,000. The debt, owed to Atrium Health for emergency heart surgery Gary underwent in 2009, grew over the years to include almost $100,000 in interest charges, Donna. “We were striving, we were trying, we paid our bills,” she said. “But I just couldn’t afford to pay that hospital.” As the years went by and the debt remained, the hospital system placed a lien on the Lindaburys’ home, allowing it to recover what was owed if the couple sold the property. “We’ve been just so consumed with just trying to get by with this problem,” Gary, 80, said. And now, they are past it. In early November this year, the couple received a letter from Atrium Health telling them it was removing what was left on the lien – $92,262 – and clearing from any obligation to the hospital. They were among the beneficiaries of a decision the hospital system announced in September to release 11,500 liens on people’s homes in North Carolina and five other states, some of which dated back 20 years or more. This decision came after NBC News detailed how Atrium Heal aggressively pursued patients’ medical debts.
|
|
More:
