Governor Josh Stein and Dr. Dev Sangvai, Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, held a roundtable in Greenville to discuss medical debt relief efforts in the state. The event focused on how medical debt affects North Carolinians and highlighted ongoing initiatives to reduce health care costs for families.
“As the health care costs continues to rise, our state should be focused on reducing people’s burdens, not piling them on,” said Governor Josh Stein. “I am proud of our work to reduce medical debt so we can strengthen people’s health and our state’s economy. Let’s keep working to make health care more affordable for all North Carolinians.”
Dr. Dev Sangvai added, “Care should be accessible and healing, not a source of financial distress. I know how critical it is for patients to seek help early. By relieving medical debt, we are strengthening the health of our communities and ensuring cost is not a barrier to health.”
Governor Stein has recently urged major credit reporting agencies—Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion—to reaffirm their commitment to excluding certain medical debts from credit reports. He also stressed the need for removing medical debt from consumers’ credit histories entirely.
In recent months, Governor Stein announced that more than $6.5 billion in medical debt had been erased for over 2.5 million residents through the state’s relief program over the past year. Many affected individuals have received notifications from hospitals or Undue Medical Debt confirming that some or all of their outstanding bills have been cleared.
The Medical Debt Relief Program began in August 2024 as a collaboration between NCDHHS, 99 acute care hospitals across North Carolina, and Undue Medical Debt—a nonprofit organization that purchases unpaid medical bills at discounted rates before forgiving them outright. This initiative aims both to cancel existing debts and prevent new ones by encouraging hospitals to adopt more generous charity care policies through enhanced payments provided by the Healthcare Access and Stabilization Program (HASP).
Medical debt often results unexpectedly after illness or injury and can negatively impact credit scores as well as access to housing or employment opportunities. The relief program is intended to help families regain financial stability while enabling continued access to necessary healthcare services without fear of lasting consequences.
Hospitals will continue working with Undue Medical Debt throughout the coming year as implementation progresses; eligible residents do not need to take any action themselves.
The statewide effort was initially started under former Governor Roy Cooper alongside then-NCDHHS Secretary Kody Kinsley, marking it as the first such approach nationwide using Medicaid resources for this purpose.
Governor Stein reiterated his administration’s ongoing commitment toward long-term investments addressing social determinants of health, expanding preventive care access, eliminating barriers within healthcare systems, and promoting outcomes that benefit individuals’ well-being across communities.
