An estimated 70 to 100 million Americans have some form of outstanding medical debt, with most owing more than $1,000.

Nearly 10,000 people in Lexington no longer have to worry about their old medical bills.

That's thanks to a partnership between the city and the national nonprofit Undo Medical Debt.

Lexington paid $1 million to fund the partnership, which acquires medical debt and bulk from local health systems.

Through that investment, the city says it expects to wipe out almost $90 million in debt for some lucky lex Antonians.

On the local level, it is pretty much impossible for us to really impact the national health care system and the national health insurance system.

I think everybody can agree that our health care system is messed up, that our health insurance system is messed up.

That, things like eligibility for Medicaid, Medicare, our insurance rates are constantly going up.

So it's a really, really difficult issue for us to impact on the local level.

This felt like something we could do on the local level.

The other big thing that attracted me to it is the return on investment.

We're getting 100 to 1 on our money on this relief, which is amazing.

If you told me that this was a 1 to 1 deal, that every dollar we spent received a dollar of medical debt, we would not be doing it because we simply couldn't afford to relieve that amount of debt with the budget that we have.

But because we can get 100 to 1 on our money, that million dollars we allocated can relieve upwards of 90 to $100 million.

We purchase directly from hospitals, health systems, physician groups, and the secondary market.

We purchase those files for pennies on the dollar, taking advantage of the already existing medical debt market.

We focus our work on individuals who earn 400% of the federal poverty level or below.

That's roughly $100,000 a year for a family of three, or whose medical debt equals 5% or more of their annual income.

I had guessed that most people affected by this would be people without health insurance.

The vast majority of the recipients of this relief have private health insurance.

So that means at some point, their medical bills got so big, they hit their deductibles, and then they started paying out of pocket.

So it impacts your credit score.

It impacts your pocketbook and that you're putting money towards paying off debt that you could otherwise be buying groceries, paying for your college, tuition, you know, starting a business, all those other things.

The other really big impact of it is if you're carrying unpaid medical debt, you are much less likely to go seek medical care.

We know that on average, 12% of Kentuckians are about, 410,000 people report having medical debt in a given year, which is higher than the national average of 8.6%.

And we know that the recent congressional budget decisions are projected to increase the number of Kentuckians that are going to experience the medical debt.

Nearly 46,000 people will add over 429 million in new debt statewide.

We definitely, don't see our work as a silver bullet by any means.

You know, we provide that immediate relief to people who need help now.

But we do know that a lasting solution requires systemic change around affordable coverage, more fair billing practices, and stronger consumer protections.

Lexington is the first city in Kentucky to offer this kind of relief.

Undue Medical Debt has also partnered with an organization in Paducah, and soon plans to offer medical debt relief to residents of that city who qualify.

Qualify.

Now, in case you're wondering, the program does not take applications since it can only erase medical debts it acquires from health systems or collection agencies.