Medical debt relief is essential for Lexington, and it’s coming now | Opinion

The American health insurance system is broken. Full stop. We Americans pay more for healthcare and yet have worse health outcomes than folks in other high-income nations.

On top of that, access to healthcare is uneven at best, delaying or denying care to those who need it the most and can afford it the least. Millions of Americans are uninsured or underinsured. Tens of millions of Americans carry billions of dollars of unpaid medical debt. Those bearing this burden often don’t seek regular medical care, further adding to the cycle of poor health and poor financial outcomes.

All this was on my mind when I received an email from my friend Rona Roberts in early 2023, just days into my brand-new role as Vice Mayor of Lexington. Her email linked to an article about New Orleans working to erase millions in medical debt for their residents. I was intrigued, to say the least. I then embarked on two years of investigation, research, and communication with partners & stakeholders that culminated in my proposal to allocate $1,000,000 toward medical debt relief.

The council unanimously approved the proposal in October 2024 and in July of this year, we went into contract with Undue Medical Debt, a national nonprofit with 11 years of experience in medical debt abolishment. The best part of medical debt relief? With that million dollar allocation, we can purchase and relieve upwards of $90,000,000 in debt for our residents.

This week I’m thrilled to announce the first wave of medical debt relief for residents of Lexington-Fayette County. We will be abolishing $12,641,416.24 of unpaid medical debt impacting 6,484 of our residents. Letters marked Undue Medical Debt will be going out this week. I urge recipients of these letters to open and keep them for your records. You don’t need to do anything else. That debt is erased. Gone. There is no tax implication, and any negative marks will be taken off your credit history.

While Undue Medical Debt has been doing this work for over a decade, government-initiated debt relief is still fairly new. In fact, Lexington is the 24th state or local government to partner with Undue to abolish debt for its residents. We know folks will have a lot of questions about this debt relief. You can visit https://www.lexingtonky.gov/government/initiatives/medical-debt-relief for answers to frequently asked questions. You can also reach out to Undue Medical Debt at https://unduemedicaldebt.org/contact.

While we in local government can’t fix the underlying problems of our healthcare or health insurance systems, we can help relieve some of the pressures of financial, emotional, and health burdens brought on by medical debt. In a time when the affordability and availability of Americans’ health insurance and healthcare is in jeopardy, we must do all we can to care for each other. This work is just getting started, and we hope for more waves of medical debt relief to come.

Dan Wu is Vice Mayor of Lexington.

This story was originally published November 18, 2025 at 10:30 AM.