MACON, Ga. — All eyes are on the race for Georgia's Governor's seat. As we inch closer to the primary and general elections, you're probably already noticing more campaign ads on the air.
One of our viewers, Lou Popp, asked us about a statement Democrat gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams made in some of her ads.
Abrams claims she paid off medical debt for 68,000 Georgians.
"The question is did she? And, how did she?," Popp asked 13WMAZ's Ashlyn Webb.
So, we set out to verify. Our sources include the Federal Election Commission and records from RIP Medical Debt.
Stacey Abrams is the founder of Fair Fight Action. According to a press release from the nonprofit, Fair Fight made the donation to RIP Medical Debt.
The Federal Election Commission's database shows Abrams' nonprofit contributed $1 million in September of last year and $340,000 in October to RIP Medical Debt.
Scott Patton, director of development at RIP Medical Debt, says the nonprofit used that money to eliminate debt in several states including Georgia, Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana and Mississippi.
"This particular donation alone was responsible for eliminating medical debt for over 108,000 people," Patton said.
According to records we obtained from RIP Medical Debt, that $1.34 million donation was stretched out to cover $212 million face value of medical debt.
$123 million of that was debt in Georgia.
"When a debt buyer on the secondary market purchases medical debt from a care provider, they are purchasing that debt at vastly discounted rate from what was charged to the patient, so what RIP Medical Debt does is buy the debt at that rate," Patton said.
Those records also show the breakdown of how many people per state the organization helped out. In Georgia, it adds up to 68,709 people.
So, we verified, YES, Abrams, through her nonprofit, did eliminate debt for 68,000 Georgians.
"When Fair Fight Action came to us, proposed this idea, obviously when we can deliver that much goodwill all at once, it communicates such hope to us and to everyone who is in the RIP Medical Debt orbit," Patton said.
According to the group, Fair Fight's $1.34 million gift is the third-largest in the seven year history of RIP Medical Debt and the largest gift focused on the South.