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Around 40 community members, advocacy group leaders and elected officials gathered at Beauchamp Branch Library on the south side of Syracuse Tuesday to discuss medical debt — an issue that affects citizens in central New York at a higher rate than the rest of New York state.

Organized by Citizen Action of New York, the “End Medical Debt” community forum intended to help attendees understand the “root” of the ongoing medical debt problem, which is currently affecting over 700,000 New Yorkers, said Ursula Rozum, Citizen Action’s statewide healthcare lead.

“Syracuse has the highest rates of medical debt in the entire country. We have the highest hospital costs in the entire entire nation,” Rozum, who facilitated the discussion, said. “We feel very intimately the depth of this problem.”

The event — co-hosted by several advocacy groups including the New York StateWide Senior Action Council, the New York Public Interest Research Group, Volunteer Lawyers Project of CNY and Syracuse United Neighbors, Inc. — featured testimonies from community members with first-hand experience facing medical debt, presentations about relevant statistics and legislative efforts as well as statements from guest speaker State Senator Rachel May.

Three Syracuse community members, Donna Ce’Cartel, Linda Koberna and Yvonne Griffin, began the forum by sharing their personal stories of those directly affected by medical debt.

Ce’Cartel, a cancer survivor and member of Citizen Action, described how she accumulated tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills following two hospital stays in late 2023. Additional fees for required occupational and physical therapy sessions added up to an “astronomical” cost, she said.

Although there are resources available to people who cannot afford to pay medical bills, Ce’Cartel said the state needs to make them more accessible and seek solutions for the “high costs.”

“I have serious catastrophic illnesses. I’ve had cancer. I don’t see any changes in the system … (since) 2006 when I first got diagnosed,” Ce’Cartel said. “The medical debt is a symptom of a broken healthcare system.”

Koberna, the second speaker, told the story of her late fiancé, Harry Martin — who was sued for over $10,000 by SUNY Upstate Medical University due to issues associated with his pancreatic cancer treatment payments before he died on Sept. 10, 2023.

“I couldn’t understand why they would sue a terminally ill man,” Koberna said. “He was the absolute love of my life. We were together (for) 10 years, and it just really bothers (me) he died knowing he owes this money.”

Martin and Koberna did not know that his Social Security Disability Insurance — which had previously fully funded an endoscopy he underwent at another medical facility — did not cover the bill from Upstate until they received legal papers on their front door.

Eventually, Koberna and Martin reached out to Amelia Kohli, the director of the debt program at VLP.

Along with providing legal help, Kohli urged Koberna to bring the lawsuit to the press, which resulted in a syracuse.com article that reported Upstate had filed the most medical debt lawsuits against patients out of all hospitals in Syracuse.

Shortly following the release of the article, Koberna said Upstate dismissed the case. By that time, Martin had already died.

Citizen Action member Yvonne Griffin, the final speaker, was also sued by Upstate and alleged the Upstate University Hospital made a mistake in its processing of her insurance, which negatively impacted her credit score.

In 2014, Griffin’s son was admitted to Upstate after a bicycle accident. She said her Medicaid coverage typically covered emergency room visits, but she later received a bill from the hospital which she didn’t realize was different from insurance statements Onondaga County typically sends to Medicaid recipients.

“They shove papers in front of you at the emergency room. You sign it, and if you have Medicaid, that’s it,” Griffin said.

She said the subsequent legal battle with Upstate led New York state to “intercept” her state tax refunds to repay the debt, syracuse.com reported. She also said she believes the state stopped collecting her payments due to the release of the syracuse.com article.

“At the end of the day, I was … everybody in my household was entitled to state Medicaid, so (the state) should have paid for it,” Griffin said.

Following the testimonies, representatives of several central New York community advocacy groups gave informational presentations on the state’s medical debt issue. Speakers presented data, explained new state legislations aiming to promote medical debt relief and outlined patients’ legal rights in debt cases.

Carrie Tracy, deputy director of health initiatives at the Community Service Society of New York, outlined statistics about the scope of medical debt and how they align with the goals of her organization. Throughout her presentation, Tracy cited the Urban Institute’s 2023 Medical Debt in New York State report as well as her organization’s 2022 data publication about Upstate.

Between 2019 and 2021, there has been a significant “spike” in the number of medical debt cases in NY state, Tracy said. The UI’s report suggested there are currently over 740,000 New Yorkers who have accumulated medical debt. It also highlighted central New York and rural areas of the state as having a “higher concentration” of these cases, she said.

People of color and low-income individuals in central New York are more likely to be impacted by medical debt, she said, citing a report in the Third Way’s “End Medical Debt” series.

Tracy also referred to state-funded hospitals as “extremely litigious.” According to her presentation, Upstate and the Stony Brook University Hospital in Long Island had the most debt lawsuit cases in the entire state in 2022.

Tracy discussed several legislations passed in accordance with the #EndMedicalDebt goals, such as a Dec. 2023 state law prohibiting the inclusion of medical debt information on credit reports. She also mentioned Gov. Kathy Hochul’s FY25 budget medical debt reform proposals, such as an alteration to New York state’s hospital finance assistance laws that would increase income eligibility limits to Medicaid.

Kohli described patients’ legal rights in medical debt cases, step-by-step. She urged attendees to “know their rights” when facing these cases and described what they should do if they are being billed or threatened with litigation from hospitals.

Local and state government officials — May, State Assemblymember Pamela Hunter and Onondaga county legislators Palmer Harvey and Maurice Brown — each delivered a brief statement denouncing the medical debt system.

All four officials echoed similar sentiments, expressing support for debt relief initiatives, promoting programs to “cancel medical debt” as well urging state-owned hospitals to stop litigating their patients.

Hunter thanked the speakers and said the state is working to “revitalize” central New York. She said fixing medical debt, along with other social issues, will help the region develop “what it wants to be.”

Brown said he believes Onondaga County needs to “catch up” to other municipalities’ efforts to “tackle” medical debt. Through looking to local advocacy groups as a model and the continuation of community conversations, he believes central New York can “get ahead” on this issue.

“Healthcare is a human right for everyone — regardless of class, regardless of race, regardless of gender. I don’t think that’s something you need to nitpick,” Brown said. “I think everybody needs to be together in this fight.”

Published on February 21, 2024 at 2:03 am

Contact Julia: jmboehni@syr.edu