\u201cThere isn\u2019t a political divide when it comes to medical debt. It all brings us together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As an employee in a hospital accounting department, Catherine Coe has seen how medical debt can devastate people financially. As a member of Trinity Moravian Church, she has also seen how a small group of people can ease that devastation by coming together despite their differences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trinity Moravian is \u201cdefinitely a purple congregation\u201d according to its pastor, Rev. John Jackman. The church pews hold conservative Republican Trump voters alongside liberal Democrats who vehemently oppose the president. But those political differences dissolve when it comes to helping erase people\u2019s medical bills they can\u2019t afford.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Coe told North Carolina Health News that we are all \u201cjust a single medical bill away from financial ruin.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere isn\u2019t a political divide when it comes to medical debt,\u201d the self-identified conservative continued. \u201cIt all brings us together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Terri Mabe stands on the opposite side of the aisle politically, but agrees with Coe that those differences don\u2019t matter when it comes to helping people. As someone who worked in the construction industry, Mabe has seen the same hardships as Coe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn between projects you are a lot of times without a job,\u201d she said. \u201cThen you get sick. Next thing you know, you owe $5,000, $10,000 that you cannot pay. You\u2019re barely paying your home bills. Then you\u2019re like: \u2018I can\u2019t pay it. What do I do now?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But how does one congregation of just a couple hundred people make a dent in millions of dollars of debt?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The church has honed its approach to alleviating medical debt for people in the Winston-Salem community through a series of fundraising campaigns. But it hasn\u2019t really been difficult, according to Rev. Jackman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is the easiest money I\u2019ve ever raised,\u201d he said. \u201cAll I do is tell people what we\u2019re doing, and they write me a check.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That check might be $25 or $30, but it all adds up. The church\u2019s first campaign in 2022 set a goal of $5,000 to erase approximately $500,000 in medical debt held by residents of Forsyth County. That goal was met with mostly donations under $50 each.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How does $5,000 erase one hundred times that amount in medical debt? Jackman had learned about a nonprofit called Undue Medical Debt, which purchases medical debt in large bundles, millions of dollars at a time, which allows them to buy it for pennies on the dollar. That makes it so a $1 donation erases around $100 in debt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trinity Moravian raised $17,000 in its eighth Debt Jubilee, which helped retire $2.2 million in debt. People whose debts are forgiven don\u2019t apply or ask for the help. They simply receive a letter that their debt has been eliminated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Obviously, solving the problem at the root would be preferable to fundraising to erase debt after it has accumulated, but Jackman contends that he and his congregation are concerned with fixing what they can, where they can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe hope the medical system gets fixed someday but that\u2019s beyond our pay grade,\u201d Jackman told WXII in 2023. \u201cBut what we can do is what we\u2019re doing now, buy some of the debt and forgive it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cThere isn\u2019t a political divide when it comes to medical debt. It all brings us together.\u201d As an employee in a hospital accounting department, Catherine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12470,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/863382898_1554399979778956_7688121008732121792_n.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12469"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12471,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12469\/revisions\/12471"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}