END MEDICAL DEBT

Curing America’s Healthcare Crisis

Jerry Ashton
Robert Goff
Craig Antico

Founders of RIP Medical Debt,
the national charity that’s abolished $8 billion in unpayable healthcare bills,

Edited by Judah Freed

In our fervent public debates about the broken U.S. healthcare system, we have overlooked the devastating impacts of America’s urgent medical debt crisis.  The time has come to bring medical debt into the center of our national conversation about healthcare.

#endmedicaldebt

 Book Pressroom

Voicing the authors’ diverse progressive, moderate and conservative viewpoints, End Medical Debt offers pragmatic insights on such diverse solutions as promoting healthier behaviors to reduce costs and debt, imposing price controls on drugs and care services, reforming health insurance, making Medicaid an opt-out program for all who qualify, fixing the ACA, adding a Medicare Option to the ACA for people over age 50, or enacting “Medicare for All” single-payer universal healthcare.The book concludes with the idea of an American Medical Debt Commission reporting to Congress on the national medical debt crisis.

The authors disagree on the solutions, but they all agree on their one simple act of charity — buying and forgiving medical debt. Debt forgiveness is necessary but not sufficient interim solution for medical debt until we can agree on a better financial structure for the broken U.S. healthcare system. End Medical Debt is a major step in that direction.

Hoku House pays the authors 85 percent of all net revenues for End Medical Debt (opposite of most book deals where authors get a pittance). The authors donate ALL book royalties to medical debt forgiveness. Each book sold abolishes about $500 in medical debt.

The Patient, The Doctor and The Bill Collector: A Medical Debt Survival Guide 
by Robert Goff and Jerry Ashton, published in 2016 by Hoku House, an Indie Book Awards finalist, led to RIP Medical Debt gaining attention on  HBO’s “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.” The rest is history, part of which is told in End Medical Debt.

REVIEWS

“End Medical Debt confronts an important, sad truth: No one asks to be sick. It’s hard enough being poor; it’s hard enough being sick. But being poor and sick becomes a death sentence for some, a life sentence of indentured servitude for others. The bills are almost beyond belief. I went into the hospital overnight with chest pains, and the hospital bill was $25,000. It’s time to lift this yoke off the necks of some of the most vulnerable and defenseless members of society, and that is precisely what End Medical Debt does.”
— Alan Grayson, Former U.S. Congressman (D-FL)

“End Medical Debt does more than describe the unsustainable structure of our current health care system. The book demonstrates what was always the solution: People helping people, voluntarily and without coercion. The current healthcare system has created a debt-enslaved class with few options. Necessity will produce many solutions, but in the meantime, End Medical Debt is offering hope from those willing and able to pay forward their success. Humanity at its best.”
— Ernest Hancock, Publisher, FreedomsPhoenix, Talk Show Host, “Declare Your Independence”

“End Medical Debt explains that among all the developed countries, only Americans risk the probability that medical treatment will be financially inaccessible or that a family will be made destitute from a serious injury or disease. The sacrifices families make for medical care of loved ones is heartbreaking. The experience and wisdom of authors Jerry Ashton, Robert Goff and Craig Antico have resulted in the system presented in their exciting new book. Their charity, RIP Medical Debt, may well help us to turn the corner on this major problem facing quality medical care in America.”
—Nancy A. Niparko, M.D., Attending Neurologist, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles

“While care providers fight to make ends meet and corporate interests seek out profit margins everywhere, politicians struggle to strike a balance as more and more Americans are compounding their serious health issues with unprecedented and unmanageable medical debt. Meanwhile, a small self-appointed group of experts from the world of health care finance are seeking solutions for consumers, providers and a broken system. Where there are no acceptable answers yet, people are creating them. Jerry Ashton, Robert Goff and Craig Antico are putting lifetimes of experience to work in End Medical Debt to spread the word that medical debt is a personal and national crisis. More so, they are offering answers that are gaining national attention.”
— Kevin A. Cahill, New York State Assemblyman; Chair, Assembly Committee on Insurance; Member, Assembly Committee on Health

“End Medical Debt is exactly what we need to jumpstart a national discussion about our current dysfunctional for-profit health care system, and what to do about it, so patients like me don’t have to experience the financial and personal hardships caused by medical debt. We are a forgotten, disposable, invisible universe of people. There are millions of us. This book explains with passion and honesty the nightmare of medical debt”
— Joel R. Segal, Former senior legislative assistant, U.S. Congress, 2000-2019, Co-author, HR 676: “Expanded and Improved Medicare For All”

“America spends more on medical care than any other country, and the resulting medical debt is our nation’s top reason for bankruptcy and financial ruin. I’ve seen the impact. End Medical Debt offers clear answers on what people can do for themselves and society to end this scourge.”
— Ed Asner, Actor, Activist