After a routine trip to her mailbox, Dawn Daly-Mack almost threw away an important letter that she thought was junk mail.
“I opened it up and it said, ‘Your medical bill has been paid,'” says Daly-Mack, 60, who lives in Gaston, in northeastern North Carolina. “I didn’t believe it.”
The letter turned out to be legitimate. Daly-Mack is one of about 2.5 million North Carolinians whose medical debt was erased under a new statewide agreement with hospitals. The hospital wiped away her $459 debt, dating back to a 2014 emergency room visit for a sinus infection.
“I was the only breadwinner in the family,” says Daly-Mack, who was caring for her disabled husband and two teenagers at the time. “I was not…