Last Christmas, The Los Angeles Times featured a story about the Christian Assembly Church in Eagle Rock, California.

This church raised over $50,000 in donations and through RIP Medical, used it to cancel $5.3 million in medical bills for 5,555 households.

Who is RIP Medical Debt, and how do they do this?

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Started in New York in 2014 by two former debt collectors, Craig Antico and Jerry Ashton, they now use their decades of experience to help those overwhelmed in medical debt.

Most people are not aware that doctors, hospitals and other medical institutions sell their unpaid debt to debt collectors for pennies on the dollar.

Click picture to watch John Oliver's segment

Those debt collectors then hound those patients and profit from the money they collect.

But when charities such as Christian Assembly raise money, RIP Medical Debt uses it to buy the debt for pennies on the dollar and then cancels it.

Typically, a $100 donation can buy up to $10,000 in medical debts.

To date, more than a billion dollars in medical bills have been bought and cancelled rescuing over a half million families and individuals, and all of this based on the kindness of strangers.

Editor's Note: To see a brief video from NBC Nightly News, click here. As a result of the story, NBC stations donated $150,000 to erase $40-million in medical debt for those in need.

John Oliver on his HBO show "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" using RIP Medical Debt forgave almost $15-million in debt for about 9,000 people.

To learn more, click here and here.

Please note, RIP Medical Debt buys medical bills in large bundles and defers to the donors to select whose bills are cancelled.

In the next KazanToday: A woman of seemingly modest means who left nearly $10-million to 17 community colleges throughout Washington state.