Ethan Khorana has encountered a lot of questions in his six years of community organizing. Why potholes go so long unfixed. Why overfilled dumpsters go so long without cleanup. Or public park grills go filthy. Many times, the answers aren’t all that complicated. Many times, you can just do things.
Khorana, a 20-year-old college student from Shaker Heights, encountered another one this summer when he was schooled in the realm of unpaid medical bills. With the right planning, he found, millions of dollars of his neighbors’ medical debt could be relieved for the price of a used sedan. All by making a few calls.
So, Khorana did just that. In partnership with UnDue Medical Debt, a nonprofit based in Boston, he raised a little over $10,000 from a short list of donors and, starting Thursday, helped buy up and cancel out $1.3 million in medical debt for 1,148 Cuyahoga County residents…