[ouked]

>The city is working with RIP Medical Debt, a nonprofit that buys medical debt in bulk from hospitals and debt collectors for pennies on the dollar.

I read it as $18m invested = $2b of debt for 500k people, as they seem to get a discount for buying the debt in bulk. Could always be more though :)

[helsinkiandrew]

$18m is just under $0.01 on the dollar, which sounds very good value, but apparently debt collectors pay as little as $0.04 to $0.14 on the dollar anyway due to the low chance of getting paid:

https://www.solosuit.com/posts/how-much-collection-agencies-...