For 261,000 Californians, news that their medical debt had been forgiven came out of the blue last summer in a letter from a nonprofit organization called Undue Medical Debt. What the letter didn’t mention was that model Miranda Kerr and her husband, Snap chief executive Evan Spiegel, had made it possible.
Kerr and Spiegel, who became the world’s youngest billionaire in 2015 at age 24, partnered with Undue Medical Debt to wipe out more than half a billion dollars in debt in their home state. The organization uses donations to buy bundled debt from hospitals, collection agencies, and other groups for a fraction of the nominal cost and then pays it off. Each $1 donation erases about $100 of debt, the organization says.
One in four…