Charity paid medical debt for hundreds of Chattahoochee Valley residents. Here’s how

Some Columbus and Phenix City residents will receive big, bright yellow envelopes in the mail informing them of a gift: Their medical debt has been paid off by a local charity.

That charity, Feeding Accepting Inspiring The Hurting, or F.A.I.T.H, teamed with RIP Medical Debt, a national 501(c)3 organization that uses donations to buy bundles of medical debt at a discount and forgive it.

Every dollar donated equates to $100 of debt forgiven, according to the RIP Medical Debt website.

Now, $2.2 million in medical debt will be cleared for 1,417 residents: 1,074 in Columbus and 343 in Phenix City.

Columbus resident Pat Gant is the CEO of F.A.I.T.H., which she founded in 2019 to help people who are struggling due to medical bills or other life events.

Between November and February, F.A.I.T.H. campaigned for community donations to raise $22,000 needed to abolish the debt held by the neediest residents of Columbus and Phenix City.

They were able to raise that money with the help of one church in particular, Epworth United Methodist Church in Columbus, that donated a month’s worth of mission funds to the F.A.I.T.H.

“They overwhelmed our charity,” Gant said Friday. “I thought that was just awesome.”

Recipients of the waived debt don’t know about it yet; they’ll be notified by mail next week. Gant said recipients don’t have to do anything but accept the gift.

The mission has been a personal one for Gant. She was involved in a serious car accident in 2001 and broke her back in two places. She was unable to do anything for herself for two years.

“I thought about it and if I didn’t have insurance at the time when I was in the accident... my heart just went out for people that don’t have insurance,” Gant told the L-E in December.

RIP Medical Debt, which uses “precise data analytics” to find the medical debt portfolios of those most in need. That includes those who are below twice the federal poverty level, insolvent or going through hardship. RIP purchases the debt at significantly reduced rates and forgives it.

RIP Medical Debt reports it has forgiven more than $1.3 billion in medical debt and provided financial relief to more than 650,000 families and individuals across the nation since it was founded in 2014.

Abolishing medical debt is only the one of the missions of F.A.I.T.H, Gant says.

During the coronavirus pandemic, the charity has bought lunch for medical professionals and helped those who lost their businesses due to the virus start businesses out of their homes.

Though Gant hadn’t predicted the pandemic, the timing of providing financial relief through RIP for the area’s neediest citizens couldn’t be better.

“People are going through so many different crises in their lives right now with this Covid-19,” she said. “Hopefully they will have more inspirational thoughts in their mind.”

Gant and her husband James have lived in Columbus for 41 years. He is a State Farm agent as well as pastor at Corinth Missionary Baptist Church. Pat works as his office manager.