For a family facing an unpaid hospital bill, medical debt can become a burden long after treatment ends. MacKenzie Scott has used part of her fortune to support a model designed to remove some of those debts altogether.
Since 2020, Scott has given $130 million to Undue Medical Debt, formerly known as RIP Medical Debt. The organisation says it buys medical debt at steep discounts and abolishes it rather than collecting from patients. It has now abolished more than $40 billion in medical debt across all 50 states. The scale of the relief has made medical debt one of the most notable parts of Scott's wider philanthropic record.