Thursday, February 17 at 5 pm
As you may recall, the Southwest Conference Executive Board endorsed the Predatory Debt Collection Protection Act on behalf of the Conference. We are partnering with Healthcare Rising Arizona - the organization responsible for the Predatory Debt Collection Protection Act - to move this ballot measure forward. This measure will appear on the ballot in 2022 - if they can collect the 237,000+ valid signatures needed to qualify. I support this as your Conference Minister- and we endorsed it as a Conference - because it will help protect Arizonans – including our church members – from predatory debt collection practices. It’s the natural next step after our medical debt relief campaign during Lent last year. As you know, far too many people are struggling with medical debt from unpayable bills, and this will ensure that folks who are struggling are able to keep their homes, property, and paychecks.
When the Executive Board initially endorsed the measure, we thought our churches could serve as locations for volunteers to collect member and community signatures. Unfortunately, this idea has turned out to be another casualty of COVID. That said, there are still plenty of opportunities for us to help out. I am inviting you to join an organizing Zoom call with me, and representatives of Healthcare Rising Arizona, on Thursday, February 17 at 5 PM.
This call will give you the opportunity to meet the team behind the ballot measure and learn how you and your congregants can get involved. Please, do share this invitation with your social justice, mission, and/or outreach teams and with your members and friends.
Another great thing about this effort is that Healthcare Rising has partnered with RIP Medical Debt and is using their signature-gathering campaign to raise money to retire the medical debt of our neighbors. For every volunteer signature collected, Healthcare Rising Arizona contributes to RIP Medical Debt! To date, they’ve raised enough money to retire over $1 million worth of medical debt, and they are working hard to do a lot more. Learn more about this work at HealthcareRisingAZ.org.
I hope you will consider joining this signature campaign as a congregation during Lent 2022. It’s a great next step to last year’s Lenten campaign to retire medical debt. We will be helping our neighbors stay in their homes, keep their personal property, and retain more of their paychecks while they pay down their medical bills. And we will be raising money toward retiring medical debt.
Rev. Dr. Bill Lyons