NC government incentivizing hospitals to relieve medical debt [Video]

RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina state government is seeking to rid potentially billions in medical debt from low- and middle-income residents by offering a financial carrot for hospitals to take unpaid bills off the books and to implement policies supporting future patients.

Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s administration unveiled Monday a plan it wants federal Medicaid regulators to approve that would allow roughly 100 hospitals that recently began receiving enhanced federal Medicaid reimbursement funds to get even more money.

But to qualify an acute-care, rural or university-connected hospital would have to voluntarily do away with patients’ medical debt going back ten years on current Medicaid enrollees — and on non-enrollees who make below certain incomes or whose debt exceeds …