Winston-Salem church to pay off more than $2 million in medical debt

A Winston-Salem church has raised funds to forgive around $2.5 million in medical debt for families in Central North Carolina.

Trinity Moravian Church raised more than $25,000 as part of its winter campaign to buy and forgive debt. The church has been doing this kind of work for the past three years.

But this time the initiative, which allows the church to buy the debt for pennies on the dollar, came amid changes statewide and nationally.

In January, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced unpaid medical bills would no longer appear on credit reports. And last year, hospitals in North Carolina signed on to a state program to relieve medical debt.

Trinity Moravian Church Rev. John Jackman says his congregation is already considering new ways to stay involved.

"We're going to have to just go forward one step at a time to see what the current environment is like to figure out what our next step is," he says. "Whether it's continuing to buy debt as we've been doing, or, I think we're going to be doing some lobbying in terms of just making sure that politicians have all heard the voice of the people."

Jackman says the state program wiped out a lot of debt owned by hospitals that they were initially targeting. But the congregation was able to find other bills to forgive outside that system, such as money owed for ambulance services and physician practices.

The church will host a debt-burning ceremony at its 11 a.m. service on Sunday.