Once again John Oliver proves that you can do anything with money and lawyers
Oliver then proceeded to detail how with $50 and knowledge of the law he was able to successfully apply online to create a debt buying company named “Central Asset Recovery Professionals,” or as Oliver put it, “CARP” named after “a bottom-feeding fish.”
After setting up a rudimentary website for CARP, the satirical, but still real company was offered a $15 million package of medical debt for $60,000.
Oliver explained that the debt was out of statute, which means it is the kind of debt that a collector can only continue to collect, but not sue the debtor for.
Then, instead of chasing down the 9,000 debtors in the debt package as a normal collection agency would, Oliver decided to stage the largest one-time giveaway in television history and work with the nonprofit RIP Medical Debt to forgive the $15 million with no consequences for the debtors.
Okay but now I know what I want to do of I get rich?
You dont have to be rich to do a bit of this actually
RIP Medical Debt is a charity (and therefore takes donations). They buy the rights to medical debt and then forgive them. So far they’ve forgiven over 1B in medical debt.
So a little ray of hope for someone out there today.
Donating $10 buys $1,000 of medical debt. This is real, it works, and we’ve done it ourselves. You can too.
As of June 29, 2024, the charity is still active under a new name, Undue Medical Debt
