Today Governor Josh Stein and North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Dev Sangvai hosted a roundtable discussion in Greenville to learn about the impacts of medical debt relief on North Carolinians. Governor Stein also called on the North Carolina General Assembly to join him in working to bring down health care costs. 

“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.”

“Care should be accessible and healing, not a source of financial distress,” said NC Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Dev Sangvai. “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.”

Continuing his efforts to protect North Carolinians from the burden of health care costs, this month Governor Stein called on the three major national credit reporting agencies – Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion – to publicly reaffirm their commitment to excluding certain medical debts from credit reports. Governor Stein also emphasized the importance of removing medical debt from consumers’ credit histories altogether. Click here to read the letter. Recently, Governor Stein also joined WakeMed for its Whole Health Campus Groundbreaking, which is bringing a 150-bed mental health and well-being hospital and a 45-bed acute care hospital to Garner. 

Last month, Governor Stein announced that the state’s medical debt relief program erased more than $6.5 billion in medical debt for more than 2.5 million North Carolinians over the past year. Hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians are receiving letters from hospitals and the nonprofit Undue Medical Debt letting them know that some or all of their medical debt has been cleared. An example of letter is available on the DHHS website.  

In August 2024, all eligible hospitals in the state joined the first-of-its-kind Medical Debt Relief Program, a partnership between the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS), the state’s 99 acute care hospitals, and Undue Medical Debt, a nonprofit that buys medical debt. The program is designed to both cancel past medical debt and prevent new debt from accumulating.  

Under the program, hospitals receive enhanced payments through the Healthcare Access and Stabilization Program (HASP) in exchange for adopting more generous charity care policies, improving financial assistance processes to reduce the burden of medical bills on North Carolinians who seek critical health care services.

Medical debt is rarely voluntary, often arising unexpectedly after illness or injury, damaging credit, limiting access to housing and jobs, and delaying care. By relieving this debt, North Carolina is helping families regain financial stability, remove negative credit marks, and access essential health care without fear of long-term consequences.  

Hospitals will continue working with Undue Medical Debt over the next year to fully implement the program. Eligible individuals do not need to take any action. For more details about eligibility and the program, visit Undue Medical Debt’s Frequent Asked Questions page.  

North Carolina’s program to relieve medical debt was started by former Governor Roy Cooper and his NCDHHS Secretary, Kody Kinsley. The program is the first in the nation to take this forward-looking approach and leverage the state’s Medicaid program to make it possible. Governor Stein and NCDHHS remain committed to improving the health of all North Carolinians through long-term investments that address social determinants of health, support access to preventative care, remove barriers to health care, and incentivize outcomes that support healthy individuals and communities.