Our Veterans have suffered enough. Whether it be homelessness, PTSD/TBI, spotty treatment at the VA (where collectively they owe as much as $6B in unpayable medical bills), and a staggering suicide rate over twice that of the civilian population -they desperately need champions who offer more than the time-worn “Thank you for your service” on Veteran holidays.

Our Campaign Answers the Call – #EndVetMedDebt! (EVMD)

Welcome to Veteran Mission Possible (VMP), a team of Veterans and Veteran Advocates singularly focused on bringing about national awareness and decisive action to both eradicate some $6B in unpaid medical debt owed by Veterans through the VA as well as greatly diminish their horrendous suicide rate. This can and will be accomplished by “Solution Providers” we are searching out who have those solutions – but not the awareness that their work deserves to catch the attention of legislators and policymakers

Who are and where are these rescuers? Are they next door, or a continent away? Are they merely conventional businesses offering little in the way of permanent change or real-world innovators that no one has heard about but are bringing about authentic curatives? We are bringing on board innovative healthcare professionals, lawyers, academics, inventors, politicians, community leaders, and Veterans themselves to collaborate in this work.

The First Lightning Strike!! 

(“If they don’t know about you, they can’t do anything about you!” - Jerry Ashton)

 No one knows that bit of reality better than Jerry, the Navy veteran and former debt collection executive who helped to co-found RIP Medical Debt (RIP), the charity that to date has abolished over $8.5B in medical debt for 5.4M Americans.

RIP did not have a promising start. From its launch in January of 2014, Jerry and fellow RIP co-founder Craig Antico could find neither funding nor an audience. They had the solution in hand to relieve Americans of the burden of medical debt – they just didn’t have public awareness.

Thanks to John Oliver and his Last Week Tonight Show, the problem went away.

On June 6, 2016, John Oliver used RIP to pull off the largest one-time giveaway in television history – the public forgiveness of almost $15M in medical debt! Even today, both RIP and Jerry continue to capture media attention – most recently CBS Sunday Morning where Jerry was interviewed. RIP reported $50,000 brought in from 500 new donors within the first day of airing.

Can that kind of lightning strike twice? Yes, with your help of course. Jerry's just-published Memorial Day 2023 tribute to someone who wonderfully fit that role early on in RIP's history is at this link.

Unpaid and unpayable medical debt weighing down our vets and horrific rates of Veteran suicides will be a thing of the past when more and more people support our campaigns. Following the John Oliver example, we’ll be getting that attention through articles published in our own online newspaper. Your funding will help bring America’s awareness to these “Awareness Impact” engines.

Lastly, EVMD is our original social media campaign and website designed to raise awareness and collect signatures for our Change.org petition. Once enough signatures are collected, we will be petitioning the Department of Veterans Affairs to make changes to its policies to make available their unpaid medical debt for full and complete forgiveness. No strings. No hoops to jump through. No denials.

Now, that’s a much better way to express your thanks for that service.