Medical Debt Fairness Act/ Olivia Hiltbrand 6/15/25

Mindy and Mikaela speak with Olivia Hiltbrand about the Ohio Medical Debt Fairness Act.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Back on a Father's Day and we have you know,
it starts with an f Father's Day to friends, father's friends.
Fathers are friends and friends are fathers.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Some colleagues that we've worked with before it Channel four
in with us Olivia Fecto, former NBC four reporter and W. E. W.
S reporter where I worked with you a couple of times. Yes,
good to see you and your husband, whom we also
know from NBC four and many other things around town,
including you did crew, you did the crew stuff.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Didn't you know I was on the broadcast team.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yeah, Brett Hill Brands.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Yeah, but Brett, I have all you know what I'm
going to say, Oh cookie story, Yeah, because our producer, now,
it was just a funny story back when he was
a kid. He was producing for us on the weekend
mornings and we were just doing a segment on baking
cookies and he goes, I'll bake them, and he baked
them without the cookie sheet. It's all I wanted to
say about Brett.

Speaker 4 (00:47):
Brett's cooking has really improved over the years.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
Just for the right I can't get any worse.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
There's nowhere to go, there's nowhere to go up and
putting it on, keep it on the great.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
And we went to take like a live picture of
how those cookies are coming along. So the door opens
and I was working with Marshall mcpak at the time,
and when they closed the door, marshals like, we open
that door again, are those cookies actually melting through the sheets?

Speaker 4 (01:12):
Up?

Speaker 3 (01:13):
Marshall go, that's the best part of the story is
that we in the control room saw that and dumped
out of it as fast as we possibly could. Come
back to the two shot of Mindy and Marshall, and
Marshall just starts wagging the finger at the camera and
says no, no, no, no, no, go back to that,
and made Joe Clark, who has been at Channel four
for a long time as the photog, made Joe open

(01:34):
the oven again to see the cookies dripping and burning.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
You weren't there at Channel four.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Yeah, I was going to say that.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
I don't even think.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
I think he was a swinging single back then.

Speaker 4 (01:46):
Olivia, he was probably about twenty one, said, I'm not.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
No doubt, no doubt. So when did you two met
at Channel four or did you meet in Huntington?

Speaker 4 (01:54):
We met in Huntington, So my first job as a
reporter was at WSAZ down in Huntington and Charleston, West Virginia.
Brett was a producer doing sports some of the time,
and then yeah, we managed our way through several stations
long distance before we both landed back in Columbus.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
So, right now, Olivia is all about promoting and initiating change.
But in order to understand the change you want to see,
I think it's a good idea to back up and
tell everybody your story and what needs to be done.
You're a cancer survivor, I am.

Speaker 4 (02:22):
Yeah. In October of twenty twenty, I was thirty one
at the time, I was quite unexpectedly diagnosed with a
very rare and aggressive blood cancer called acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
It's the type of cancer that you more often see
in young children, sometimes in older people as well, but
thirty one not really something you expect. So, you know,

(02:42):
was in treatment for nearly three years, and that first
year of treatment in particular, and Brett can certainly attest
to this, was incredibly difficult for a number of reasons,
you know, but the financial stress of it really was
just astronomical.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
And the amazing thing is too, you know, you were working,
you were young, you were in your third but we
were discussing this as you guys are walking in. You
were not prepared when you were in your early thirties
to deal with the diagnosis like that, let alone the
financial aspect that comes with it. How you knew insurance
was going to take care of some things, But what
were you most surprised about? When did you notice it

(03:16):
was going to be more than just what you thought
it might be.

Speaker 4 (03:19):
I mean, the second we got the first bill from
my first three weeks in the hospital at the beginning
of my treatment, we were billed almost two hundred thousand dollars.
We opened up that bill on the insurance website and
I think it's at one hundred and ninety two thousand,
is that right?

Speaker 1 (03:33):
And you guys are decent working people. I mean, you
would think that the majority of what you were experiencing
insurance would cover.

Speaker 4 (03:42):
Right, And you know, we were in some ways a
little bit fortunate that I got sick in October and
so by that point we had already met some of
our deductible for the year. So for those first couple
months we maybe had to pay two grand out of pocket.
But then January first comes the deductible resets, and you're
on the hook again for thousands of dollars, and in
a treatment as long as mine was, you know, almost
three years in total, it just really adds up. I

(04:04):
stopped keeping track at around the fourteen month mark, and
we'd been our insurance had been billed a million dollars
at that point.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
Now you're going through so much already emotional answer, exactly.

Speaker 4 (04:16):
Right, And I wasn't working during that time, but you know,
it's it's entirely a full time job to have to
call you know, hospitals and providers and insurance and try
and just argue and wrangle and try and figure out, well,
why was this bill so high? Was this supposed to
be this high? And it's a lot of stress. And
Brett was working full time at the time, so you know,
we had we had that.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
But what was your perspective?

Speaker 3 (04:38):
Yeah, managing all this during COVID too, right, So you
have an immunocompromised person at home in a pandemic where
we don't really know what's going on, and you're trying
to kind of manage that. It was seclusion on like
a friends and family basis, like we we basically shut
it down because you know, a cold when your blood

(04:58):
counselor in the single digits in terms of red blood
count red blood, red blood cell, white blood cell counts
a cold as a major problem, let alone something like
COVID coming along. So we you know, we were kind
of fighting the war on two, three, four different fronts.
And then you know, as kind of the treatment progresses,

(05:20):
you know, there are certain things that live had to
do to be able to prepare for chemotherapy. So we're
talking single shots that are twenty thirty forty thousand dollars.
You know that multiplies really really fast. The the best
kind of maybe personification of this story in terms of

(05:41):
the debt really kind of piling up is I went
to the pharmacy. We were there all the time, multiple
times a week, picking a medication. This is early January
in twenty twenty two, I believe, you know, twenty one
or twenty twenty two. It's like January like seventh, and

(06:02):
at that point been there so much on her first
name basis with the pharmacist, Kevin. Kevin, Yeah, Kevin from
the Fairview Fairview Park. Johnny Eagle looks at me and
says yeah, this is this is like a six hundred
dollars bill for the this medication you're picking up. And
I was like, I don't know, man, Like I think,
maybe could you like check and run the insurance again,

(06:25):
because I would be shocked if we hadn't hit her
deductible yet. And he kind of looked at me and
he's like, it's the first week of the year. What
do you mean you hit your deductible? When did you
hit your deductible? And I looked at him and I
was like, I don't know, man, January second.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
Yeah, well, I was going to ask it with's a
dumb question, but I feel like I need to ask it.
When you hit your deductible is that supposed to be it?
And deductibles can be what ten twenty thousand dollars if
you could paint that picture too.

Speaker 4 (06:50):
So the type of plan that I had through my
employer at the time was a high deductible plan and
so thankfully what that meant for us is once you
hit the deductible, that was also your out of pocket cost.
So I think for us that second year, I want
to say it was several thousand. I don't remember the
exact amount, but you know, there's so many different healthcare
plans out there. If you have a high deductible plan,

(07:10):
you know, the rules are kind of different. If you
have a plan where you're paying a copay every time
you're out of pocket, cost might not have you know,
a very specific maximum. And when we think about right,
and when we think about how much all of that is,
you know, most people don't have thousands of dollars in
savings to be able to just unexpectedly put toward a
bill like that.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
Now, do you know how many people are listening right
now who have probably gone through such a similar situation
Because cancer has affected so many people and it doesn't
just have to be cancer. There's the high cost of
so many different diseases and treatments for them. But there's
good news to all this. So what do you say
we take a break and when we come come back
find out what the good news is that they're working on.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
Because Mindy has hit it seven in Tenant, Ohio. Adults
you'd shared this with us have personal experience with medical debt.
But Olivia was just over the state has and we
will talk about house built two fifty seven? Is that right?
And what she is doing and Brett supporting her as
well to change this in the state of Ohio. So
we'll do that after the break. This is what matters
on six ten WTV.