Jefferson Humanities Forum - Luke Messac: Your Money or Your Life

When patients cannot pay their hospital bills, they are at risk of profound financial and legal consequences. They face lawsuits, wage garnishment, home foreclosure, denial of care, and even J*il time. How did hospitals come to use such tactics to collect debts, and how do they affect patients and the physicians responsible for their care? Emergency physician and historian Luke Messac studies how medical debt collection became a multi-billion-dollar industry and the effects of aggressive debt collection on health and financial outcomes. The problem asks us to reconsider the purpose of our modern healthcare system and whom it truly serves. Dr. Messac will be joined by panelists Lindsay Muniak and Jared Walker to discuss their advocacy and innovative solutions to this urgent issue.

Keynote speaker Luke Messac is an attending physician in the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Department of Emergency Medicine and an Instructor at Harvard Medical School. He received his BA from Harvard University, his MD and PhD in the History and Sociology of Science from the University of Pennsylvania and completed residency training in emergency medicine at Rhode Island Hospital. His research focuses on the history and political economy of health care. His first book, , is a history of medical neglect in colonial-era southern Africa. His second book, , is a history of medical debt collection in the United States.

Panelist Lindsey Muniak is an organizer with the Debt Collective, where she leads national efforts to abolish medical debt, interrupt patterns of financialization in healthcare, and bring those who have experienced the failures of our healthcare system into the fight for its transformation.

Panelist Jared Walker founded Dollar For after watching his own family go through a medical crisis. Since 2021, the nonprofit has eliminated over $55 million in hospital bills nationwide. Jared’s mission is to make charity care known, easy, and fair, ensuring that a medical crisis never becomes a financial crisis.

About the Carlin Foundation Annual Lecture on Healthcare Innovation

The purpose of the Carlin Foundation Annual Lecture on Healthcare Innovation is to stimulate innovation in medicine and medical care delivery by exposing students and other attendees to notable speakers and ideas. The Foundation encourages the selection of speakers who will challenge participants to think creatively and innovatively about the difficulties and opportunities facing healthcare, looking, in particular, to experts and industries outside of healthcare.

Jefferson students may count this event for credit towards the Asano Humanities & Health Certificate.

Learn more: Jefferson.edu/Humanities

During 2024-2025, the Jefferson Humanities Forum hosts multidisciplinary scholars and thinkers to investigate the theme of Access.

Questions? Contact Kirsten Bowen, Humanities Program Coordinator, Student Affairs, at [email protected].

Host or Publisher Jefferson Humanities & Health