Close to 6,000 families in the Chicago area will be getting a life-changing gift just in time for the holidays: the clearing of their medical debts.
A group of churches serving the Cook County community has banded together to buy and then forgive the medical debt of 5,888 families in need, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Families receiving the gift will find out in the coming days when bright yellow envelopes with “RIP Medical Debt” written on them appear in their mailbox, the Tribune explains.
Statistics show such a gift can be life-altering.
As CNBC reported earlier this year, a study by the American Journal of Public Health found that two thirds of all bankruptcies in the U.S. are due to medical expenses—either the cost of actual care or the impact of time spent out of work.
Actress comes under fire over her use of the n-word
“People don’t know that they’re going to receive this,” one of the organizers of the debt forgiveness effort, the Rev. Otis Moss III of Chicago’s Trinity Church, told the Tribune. “And it’s my imagination that there will be 5,888 families in Cook County that will be shouting and thanking God that their debt has been forgiven.”
And the only criteria for the gift? That a family be in need of having the debt paid off. Families that were helped did not need to be a member of a particular church, or even a faith.
“We see Cook County as our parish,” Moss said. “So you will receive debt forgiveness whether you are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, humanist, secular, agnostic, atheist, whether you’re black or you’re white. The only criteria that we laid out is that we want to make sure the most vulnerable are in line. Or as Scripture says, ‘The last shall be first.’”
Recent Comments