Illinois medical debt relief program surpasses $1B goal in two years
[October 16, 2026]
By Bernarda Malevska
The state has erased over $1.4 billion in medical debt for almost
700,000 Illinoisans for pennies on the dollar, two years after launching
a new relief program.
At its launch, the Illinois Medical Debt Relief Program aimed to
eliminate $1 billion in debt. The state has surpassed that goal by $400
million, spending less than $10 million in state dollars to achieve
these results. That means that every state dollar invested in the
program wiped out over $100 in debt.
That was possible due to the state’s partnership with Undue Medical Debt
— a nonprofit that works with local governments and healthcare providers
to purchase and eliminate qualifying medical debt owed by low-income
residents.
“Medical debt is a leading cause of bankruptcy,” Gov. JB Pritzker said
in a news conference Thursday in Chicago. “It can ruin credit, limit
financial opportunities, and cause years of uncertainty long after they
leave the hospital. That is a symptom of a truly broken system.”
Illinois residents whose household income is at or below 400% of the
federal poverty level, or who have medical debt equal to 5% or more of
their household income, are eligible.
Residents do not apply to this program — impacted households receive
letters after their debts have been erased.
“Healthcare should be about getting people back on their feet, not just
keeping them, well, down with years of financial struggle,” Pritzker
said.
The statewide initiative was modeled after Cook County’s program that
launched in 2022. Since then, the Cook County Medical Debt Relief
Initiative has eliminated an additional $1 billion in medical debt,
covering 22% of eligible adults.
The American Rescue Plan Act funded the Cook County initiative to
support recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. These funds end this year,
Toni Preckwinkle, president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners,
said.
“At a time when the Trump administration is stepping back from its
federal responsibility to working families, Cook County and the state of
Illinois are standing firm in our belief that access to quality
healthcare should not depend on your income or your ability to pay,”
Preckwinkle said.
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Recently, President Donald Trump and the federal government have rolled
out cuts to Medicaid, a program that provides free or low-cost coverage
to people with limited income and resources.
The Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services warned that
two policy changes are expected by the beginning of 2027 and may reduce
Illinoisans’ eligibility: redeterminations every six months for Medicare
eligibility instead of every year and a federal work requirement.
For Steph Willding, CEO of Community Health, a center offering free
services for low-income, uninsured and underinsured patients, access to
healthcare should never be connected to their ability to pay.
“We know the value of taking away the barrier of cost for our patients,
and as federal policy changes continue to threaten healthcare coverage
for more and more Illinoisans, this program has never been more
important,” said Willding at a news conference.
The average debt relieved of the medical debt relief program per
resident was over $1,200, while the highest amount eliminated was over
$900,000.
The program relieved debt for residents in all 102 Illinois counties. In
40 counties, more than 5% of residents received debt relief. In 11
counties with populations over 100,000, the percentage was even higher,
with Kankakee County at over 21.5%.
Although Cook County will fund this initiative from its own budget,
Preckwinkle said they aren’t willing to walk away from the program.
“The next phase of this work will put data from this initiative to use
to understand who is being pushed into medical debt and why, and to
design policies that address its root causes,” Preckwinkle said.
Capitol News Illinois
is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state
government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded
primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick
Foundation.
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