On Monday, the Medical Debt Mitigation Amendment Act of 2025 was introduced by the DC Council. The legislation would prevent and mitigate the burden of unpaid medical bills on District families.
In introducing the bill, Councilmember Christina Henderson, who chairs the DC Council’s Committee on Health, cited Tzedek DC’s groundbreaking June 2025 medical debt report, "More Than a Band-Aid: Systemic Changes to Protect DC Residents from Medical Debt." The report found that nearly 90,000 District residents have unpaid medical bills. Medical debt causes financial, physical, and mental health harms, including an inability to secure jobs, housing, and other lines of credit. Medical debt also causes patients to delay necessary medical care, leading to worse health outcomes.
Councilmember Henderson introduced the bill alongside a majority of the Council—Councilmembers Charles Allen, Anita Bonds, Janeese Lewis George, Brianne Nadeau, Zachary Parker, Brooke Pinto, and Robert White—signing on as co-introducers.
The bill includes specific key policy solutions based on Tzedek DC’s report recommendations. If enacted, the bill would strengthen health care facilities’ financial assistance policies and require facilities to offer payment plans, ban medical debt from DC patients’ credit reports, limit medical debt interest rates, and clarify enforcement authority for the DC Office of the Attorney General and DC Department of Health. The bill would also create new protections against harmful debt collection methods such as wage garnishment and home liens based on medical debt.
“It is imperative that the District take a more upstream approach to preventing and mitigating medical debt,” Councilmember Henderson stated. “This bill is particularly timely given current and upcoming local and federal changes to public health insurance programs.”
“We applaud this step by the Council and are grateful for the work of Councilmember Henderson and her team. With Medicaid cuts having taken effect and DC’s Alliance health insurance protections being rolled back, DC must act now to shield our residents,” said Ariel Levinson-Waldman, Founding Director of Tzedek DC. “Addressing medical debt head-on can help thousands of families regain financial stability and improve health outcomes, and make the system fairer and smarter. We urge the Committee on Health to hold a hearing soon, and the full Council to prioritize these reforms.”
Medical debt deepens racial disparities. In DC, residents of color are twice as likely to hold medical debt as their white neighbors. This exacerbates DC’s already extreme and unacceptable racial wealth gap, where white DC households hold, on average, an estimated 81 times more wealth than Black DC households.
DC has already helped eliminate some of the medical debt held by 62,000 District residents through a 2024 DC-funded initiative by the Mayor that Tzedek DC was proud to help facilitate. But without systemic reform, this emergency relief will have only been a temporary, partial fix.
Further details about Tzedek DC’s Medical Debt Report and DC’s 2024 emergency debt relief are available here.
About Tzedek DC, Our Medical Debt Work, and the Health Equity Fund
Tzedek DC’s name is drawn from the ancient Jewish teaching “Tzedek, tzedek tirdof,” or “Justice, justice you shall pursue.” Headquartered at the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law, and with offices also in Ward 8, Tzedek DC is a nonprofit organization. Our mission is to safeguard the legal rights and financial health of DC residents with lower incomes facing the often-devastating consequences of debt collection and credit-related obstacles, including those arising from medical debt. This mission is carried out as anti-racism work in response to the massive wealth gaps tracking race in DC and nationwide. Tzedek DC seeks to serve and empower its client base, which is comprised of 90% Black residents, 60% women, and 25% disabled community members. Our strategic approach combines three synergistic activities: (i) free direct services—legal representation and advice, and financial counseling; (ii) working in coalition to make systemic change; and (iii) providing bilingual community legal education on debt collection, identity theft, and credit management.
A portion of Tzedek DC’s medical debt work is funded by the Health Equity Fund, as administered by the Greater Washington Community Foundation in partnership with the Health Equity Committee. The Health Equity Fund is designated to improve the health outcomes and health equity of residents of the District of Columbia. The historic fund is one of the largest philanthropic funds of any kind focused on community-based nonprofits that serve District residents. Given that 80 percent of DC’s health outcomes are driven by social, economic, and other factors, compared to just 20 percent by clinical care, the Health Equity Fund adopts an economic mobility framework to address the root causes of health inequity and advances a sustainable network of people, organizations, and projects to ensure equitable health outcomes for Black, Brown, Indigenous, People of Color and other marginalized populations in DC.
We are especially grateful to the Health Equity Fund for the support and shared vision of health equity and racial and economic justice.