END MEDICAL DEBT
Curing America's Healthcare Crisis
Updated and Expanded Covid Recovery Edition
Jerry Ashton • Robert E. Goff • Craig Antico
• Founders of the charity, RIP Medical Debt
Introduction by Allison Sesso
Edited by Judah Freed
Prior Edition: #1 Bestseller in Health Policy - Top 100 in Personal Finance
Three healthcare management and debt collections insiders expose the hardships of personal and family medical debt in America. They explore our options for fixing the broken healthcare system producing $140 billion in unpayable medical bills.
Book Features
- Paints the Big Picture for the causes and consequences of the current $140 billion in U.S. medical debt.
- Offers practical tools and insights for individuals and families facing the pain of unpayable medical bills.
- Explains the structure and financing of medical care. Lays bare how it works, and why it works that way.
- Exposes medical costs and debt inequities for the poor, for veterans and for the underinsured middle class.
- Shows how early hospitals and insurance evolved to became trapped into putting profits before health.
- Weighs proposed national solutions from the authors' progressive, moderate and conservative viewpoints.
- Explores the balance between personal responsibility and social responsibility in generating good health.
- Tells the origin story of RIP Medical Debt. Gives an inside look at buying and abolishing hardship debt.
The authors and publisher donate 85 percent of all revenues to RIP Medical Debt, a charity using donations to buy old medical debt for pennies on the dollar and then forgive it. Each book sold abolishes about $500 in hardship healthcare debt.
Reviews
"End Medical Debt is one of the best books I've read that explains how our healthcare system became a voracious monster, and the steps we can take, individually and collectively, to keep it from devouring us."
Wendell Potter, Center for Health and Democracy
"The Covid recovery edition of End Medical Debt breaks down critical issues in a way that's easy to understand. "
Marlene Wust-Smith MD, Physician Outlook Magazine
"End Medical Debt is special because it advocates for systemic change while providing tactical solutions for Americans now facing the devastating burden of medical debt.
Rohan Pavluri, Upsolve
"End Medical Debt does more than describe the unsustainable structure of our current healthcare system. The book demonstrates what was always the solution: People helping people, voluntarily and without coercion."
Ernest Hancock, FreedomsPhoenix
"End Medical Debt is exactly what's needed to jumpstart the national discussion about our dysfunctional healthcare system, and what to do about it."
Joel R. Segal, Former senior assistant, U.S. Congress. Co-author of the "Medicare For All" bill.
Jerry Ashton is a four-decade veteran of the collections industry who rethought his career and profession after being inspired by his work in the Occupy Wall Street movement. He turned from debt collector to debt for-giver, which led him in 2014 to co-founding RIP Medical Debt. Achieving in 2020 his goal of RIP abolishing $1billion in medi-cal debt, Jerry retired to RIP's board and founded LetsRethinkThis.com to address and solve other societal problems.
Robert E. Goff has more than 45 years of experience in the healthcare industry. He is a respected expert in care delivery, organ-ization and financing. His career spans a range of leadership roles as a hospital administrator, managed care executive, consultant, regulator, and association executive, retiring recently as the Executive Director and CEO of University Physicians Network, based in New York. A founding director of RIP Medical Debt, he serves on its Board.
Craig Antico co-founded RIP Medical Debt after he ran companies that bought and collected debt for a profit. Today, he's a sought-after expert in debt forgive-ness and identi-fying people with debt causing hardship. He's been interviewed by national media, including NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt, PBS Newshour, The Doctors, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal. Town and Country named him among its top forty Philanthropist of the Year. He serves Emeritus on the RIP board.
