Fair Fight Action, an organization founded by Democrat politician Stacey Abrams, has donated $1.34 million from its political action committee to the nonprofit organization RIP Medical Debt to wipe out debt with a face value of $212 million that is owed by 108,000 people in Georgia, Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
Abrams founded Fair Fight Action to address voter suppression. The group has raised more than $100 million since Abrams founded it after her 2018 loss in the Georgia governor’s race.
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“I know firsthand how medical costs and a broken healthcare system put families further and further in debt,” Abrams said in a statement. “Across the sunbelt and in the South, this problem is exacerbated in states like Georgia where failed leaders have callously refused to expand Medicaid, even during a pandemic.”
Her efforts have been widely credited with boosting voter turnout in Georgia, including in the 2020 presidential election, where Joe Biden narrowly won the state, and in Georgia’s 2020–2021 U.S. Senate election and special election, which gave Democrats control over the Senate. Fair Fight has been most noted for its advocacy of voting rights, but has also been pushing for broader health care.
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Allison Sesso, executive director of RIP Medical Debt, said such liabilities often drive people into bankruptcy, can deter people from seeking needed medical care, and can lead to wages being garnished or liens filed on property.
“We are not the permanent solution,” Sesso said. “There does need to be a larger solution around what we do about medical debt.”
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Stacey Abrams is an American politician, lawyer, voting rights activist, and author who served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 2007 to 2017, serving as minority leader from 2011 to 2017.
She was the Democratic nominee in the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election, becoming the first African-American female major-party gubernatorial nominee in the United States.
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