SOUTH JERSEY (KYW Newsradio) — New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has announced another round of medical debt relief, once again wiping out past-due medical bills for tens of thousands of people.
In this round of relief, the state purchased $120 million worth of medical debt with about $900,000 in federal funding.
This is the second debt relief effort in the last couple of months. In August , New Jersey spent $550,000 to wipe out $100 million of medical balances. More than 125,000 families are benefiting from these two purchases.
The state works with Undue Medical Debt, a debt purchaser, which buys bundles of debt from hospital systems. Instead of trying to collect, the firm forgives the debts.
In a post on X , Murphy said health care needs an overhaul, but short of that, this is the next best thing.
“This is a pretty crazy opportunity to give relief to folks that are being crushed right now,” he said in a video. “We don’t like the system, but as long as this is the system, let’s maximize our hand in retiring medical debt for pennies on the dollar.”