Cook County has erased nearly $665 million in medical debt for local residents since launching the effort in 2022, according to new figures released Thursday.
County leaders are celebrating the latest milestone of the program, which has so far helped almost 557,000 people have some of their debt abolished.
The effort has relieved the most debt for people on Chicago’s South and West sides and in the south and west suburbs. The amount erased ranges from about $600 to $4,000 on average per person, depending on where they live.
“This has been a real boon to a substantial number of our residents,” said Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle. “This I think is what the president of the United States at the time, Joe Biden, and Congress intended — that we make a real impact on peoples’ lives in the aftermath of a really cataclysmic event, not just the health scare, but the very troubling economic impacts that followed the pandemic.”
The county has become a national model for how other local governments can use their resources to erase medical debt for residents. Cook County partners with the nonprofit Undue Medical Debt, which buys old uncollectible bills from hospitals and others for pennies on the dollar, and then forgives it. With $1, Undue Medical Debt leaders have said they can relieve as much as $100 of medical debt or more at a time.
In total, the county plans to spend $9 million it has received from the federal government to help recover from the COVID-19 pandemic to erase up to $1 billion in medical debt for county residents. That money must be spent by the end of 2026, and the county has spent about two-thirds so far, said Matt Richards, Cook County deputy chief of staff for health.
Across the country, even people with private insurance have medical debt, partly because they can’t afford costly deductibles they must pay before insurers will help cover their medical bills, according to KFF, a nonprofit health policy research organization. Around 20 million people — nearly 1 in 12 — carry medical debt, KFF found. It’s one of the leading causes of bankruptcy in the U.S.
In 2023, a report documented the devastation medical debt causes Illinois families — particularly in immigrant and Black communities — causing stress that impacted their health and depleted their savings.
“It’s an extremely common reality for families around the country and in Cook County,” Richards said, of having medical debt. “Communities of color tend to be disproportionately impacted, particularly Black residents and folks in communities that are historically disinvested.”
People can’t apply for the program. They receive a letter in the mail that says some of their debt has been erased. Those who qualify have income up to 400% of the federal poverty level, which is around $62,000 for an individual, or they have medical debt that is at least 5% of their annual income.
Cook County originally planned to spend $12 million on its medical debt relief program but reduced the amount after the state announced its own initiative, Preckwinkle said. The state can erase debt for county residents, too.
Preckwinkle said the county will likely determine this year if it will fund its own medical debt relief program once the federal money runs out.
Kristen Schorsch covers the health of the region for WBEZ.