- My next guest says that all of us

are just one seriousillness or accident away

from finding ourselves in medical debt

that we cannot pay back.

A former debt collector, Craig Antico,

is co-founder of RIP Medical Debt,

a company that partners with churches

and other organizations towipe out people's medical debts

and help them put theirfinancial lives back in order.

Craig joins us now by Skype.

Great to have you on the show.

You say that half of all debt that people

in this country carry is medical debt.

Tell us why there is so much medical debt.

- Well, for example, first of all

it's about a three billion,three trillion dollars is paid

every year for medical, so it's one

of our biggest industrieshere in the country.

Secondly, if you look at, say, hospitals

and doctors, they don'tactually do very good job

of collecting their money.

So, for example, hospitalshave one collector

for ever 8,000 accounts.

So they have to outsourceit to collectors,

and collection agencies and debt-buyers

are how they do that.

- What can happen to someone who gets

into hundreds of thousandsof dollars of debt,

medical debt specifically,and they can't pay it back?

- Well what happens is theyget placed for collection

and they get calls and calls.

It can go on for 10 years or even more.

And if they ignore these calls,

they can get judgementsentered against them.

And the judgments lastfor 10, 20 even 30 years

if they get renewed.

So what's happening isif, you won't believe this

but 7% of all theemployees in this country

have a garnishment on their bank account

or at their job, you know, their pay.

- Wow- 7%, now about half

of that is childcare alimonyand things like that,

but the other half isbetween financial obligations

and medical debt, about halfof that is medical debt.

So you get to the garnishmentand now you're really

having a tremendous amount ofpressure on your livelihood.

- Yeah, no kidding.

How does your company, RIP Medical Debt,

work with churches to payoff people's medical bills?

- Well, what they do isthey come to us and say,

"Well we'd like to helpa group of people."

Usually it's a geographicgroup that's maybe

a 50 mile radius of their churches,

where their campuses are,or their church itself.

And we will actually goand look in our database,

we've got about $5 billionof debt that we can buy

at any one time.

And they will raise moneyfrom their congregation,

a hospital, a church just raiseda hundred thousand dollars

and that will abolishover $10 million of debt.

- Wow, incredible.

Craig Antico, thank you so much

for coming on the broadcast.

- Oh, thank you so much for having me.

- You're welcome.- Bye bye now.