About

Why medical debt

People do not choose when they get sick, and nobody compares prices from the back of an ambulance. The bill comes later, often after insurance has paid its part, and it is still more than a lot of people can pay. It goes to collections and follows them for years.

It is also one of the few problems where a small amount of money goes a long way. Old medical debt sells for a fraction of its face value. Once it is bought and cancelled, the bill is gone.

How Undue Medical Debt works

Hospitals, physician groups and collection agencies sell unpaid medical bills in bundles of millions of dollars, for a fraction of what the bills say. Undue Medical Debt buys those bundles.

It only buys debt owed by people who earn at or below 400% of the federal poverty level, or whose medical debt is more than 5% of their income.

Then it cancels the debt. Nobody applies, and nobody pays anything back: the relief is a gift, with no strings. People whose debt is cancelled get a letter saying it is gone, and it does not count as income for them.

More on their site. Undue Medical Debt is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit (EIN 47-1442997). It is not a partner of this project and has not endorsed it.

Where "about $100" comes from

Undue Medical Debt says that on average a $1 donation erases $100 of medical debt, because it buys the debt at a fraction of its face value. The real ratio depends on each bundle, so this site always says about.

Source: Undue Medical Debt, "How much medical debt will my donation abolish?"

So the chain of numbers is: $1 traded, 1% set aside, which is 1¢. 1¢ donated erases about $1 of medical debt. Every dollar you trade erases about a dollar of someone's medical debt.

What the coin does

• $ERASE trades on Pons, on Robinhood Chain. Each trade pays a 3% tax.
• Out of that tax, an amount equal to 1% of all trading volume is set aside for the cause. The rest pays Pons and the team.
• The amount owed is measured on-chain, trade by trade, and shown live as "Earned for the cause".
• It is donated every week through The Giving Block, and each donation is published with its transaction and its receipt. The proof page shows how the amount owed is counted.

What the coin does not do

• It pays nothing to holders. There is no reward, no yield, no airdrop.
• This site holds no money. There is no wallet to connect and no user funds pass through it.
• Trading $ERASE is not a donation, and nothing here is a statement about your taxes.
• It promises no exact ratio. Every "erased" figure is an estimate, always marked "about".
• It is not run by, endorsed by, or affiliated with Undue Medical Debt.

How big the problem is

Americans owe at least $220 billion in medical debt. 20 million people owe some, about 1 in 12 adults. 14 million people owe more than $1,000, and 3 million people owe more than $10,000.

Source: KFF, "The burden of medical debt in the United States" (published February 2024, data from late 2021).

Who is behind it

The people behind $ERASE stay anonymous, so the project is built to be checked rather than trusted. Trades are on-chain, each donation is posted with its transaction and its receipt, and the wallet the fees land in is public.

Photos

The photos are from Unsplash, under the free Unsplash License. The mother and daughter are from a stock photo. Nobody pictured is said to have owed or been relieved of any debt.

• A US mailbox with its red flag raised: a letter has arrived, by Wolfgang Vrede
• An empty hospital corridor with benches and doors, by Tasha Kostyuk
• A mother and her young daughter, cheek to cheek, smiling at the camera, by Jhon David
• A family walking away along a boardwalk at golden hour, by Jessica Rockowitz

The fine print