Editor's note: Este artículo está traducido al español.
Longtime Las Vegas resident Maria Yañez owed over $4,500 in medical bills spanning back nearly a decade — until recently.
In mid-November, Yañez received a letter pertaining to both bills one from a hospital stint in 2017 and another from a lumbar surgery and ambulance ride in 2019.
“When I received this letter, the first thing I thought was, ‘Oh, more bills,’” said Yañez, who spoke Spanish through a translator. “So I didn’t pay attention to it.”
Yañez, who was recently laid off from her job, said she didn’t take a closer look at the letter until she heard that a nonprofit had recently eliminated medical debt for several Nevadans, all of whom had no notice.
She was one of the beneficiaries of this new program and nearly cried, Yañez said, having been on the brink of declaring bankruptcy.
“I feel very blessed that I was selected for this blessing,” she said. “Because it is very, very stressful to have all these bills hanging over your head, and all you can think is like, paying the bills.”
Yañez owes the dismissal of her medical debt to Seeds of Relief, a new economic relief program launched by the Latino civic-engagement nonprofit Somos Votantes and its sister organization Somos Votantes Education Fund, which is focused on educational and charitable programs that provide Latinos with the resources needed to thrive.
Emmanuelle Leal-Santillan, national communications and media director for Somos Votantes Education Fund, said the first wave of Seeds of Relief eliminated over $133 million of medical debt for over 128,000 Nevadans in Clark and Washoe counties.
“The No. 1 issue that is affecting not only Latinos but everyone in our community is the cost of living,” he said. “People are really struggling to make ends meet. ... They’re struggling with the high cost of health care, of gas, of groceries.”
Thousands of people received a letter in the mail the week of Thanksgiving, informing them that Somos Votantes had eliminated their medical debt, Leal-Santillan said. There had been no application process.
People qualified for the program if their medical debt was 5% or more of their annual income, he said. Somos Votantes Education Fund partnered with national nonprofit Undue Medical Debt, he added, which on the former’s behalf negotiated with hospitals and collection agencies to make the most of the donations.
“We have a really great network of generous donors that believe in our work,” Leal-Santillan said.
The group purchased over $133 million of medical debt, and eliminated it instead of collecting it.
The launch of Seeds of Relief followed months of events by the organization, including backpack giveaways, free haircuts, gift card giveaways and more, to help relieve cost-of-living struggles, Leal-Santillan said.
In Nevada, the price of health care is high so that many people are “drowning” in medical debt, he said, and can become trapped in an endless cycle of stress and financial difficulty.
Because of the sensitive nature of medical debt and privacy laws, Somos Votantes Education Fund does not actually have the information of the tens of thousands of people whose debt it eliminated, Leal-Santillan said.
So, the organization launched a very public community awareness program to let people know they could receive a letter about it, and their stories began to trickle in. Many were like Yañez, and assumed it was just another bill.
“They just couldn’t believe that they no longer had to worry about that medical debt,” Leal-Santillan said. “There are other instances of people who were ... struggling to pay for groceries ... to pay for gas — who were either recently laid off, or whose hours had been cut — and so these medical debt bills were just piling up. ... They were just really, really happy.”
This was only the first wave of Seeds of Relief, and Leal-Santillan said the next could potentially include more medical-debt relief or credit-card debt relief. The organization is actively exploring next steps, he said.
Yañez, who saw $4,528 in medical debt erased, said she wants people to know that Seeds of Relief and its first wave are real and to be aware of what it means for them.
“It was just a blessing,” she said.
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