Evan Spiegel and Miranda Kerr Erase $550M in Medical Debt

A Half-Billion-Dollar Gift

Snap co-founder and chief executive Evan Spiegel and his wife, supermodel and KORA Organics founder Miranda Kerr, have made a donation that erases roughly $550 million in unpaid medical bills for more than 261,000 Californians. According to Fortune, the couple partnered with the nonprofit Undue Medical Debt to retire the obligations entirely.

The move places Spiegel and Kerr alongside other billionaires, such as MacKenzie Scott, who have used the same mechanism to attack the medical-debt crisis at scale.

How the Math Works

The gift relies on a quirk of the debt market. As Fortune explains, hospitals and providers often sell uncollectible patient debt for pennies on the dollar. Undue Medical Debt buys those portfolios at a steep discount and then cancels them outright, so every roughly $10 donated wipes out about $1,000 in patient debt.

Key details of the donation:

• More than 261,000 Californians will have debt forgiven.
• Eligible recipients earn at or below 400% of the federal poverty level, or carry medical debt exceeding 5% of annual income.
• San Diego County receives the largest share, about $99 million for roughly 40,000 residents.
• Los Angeles County receives about $26.7 million for around 17,500 people.

Letters in the Mail

Recipients do not need to apply. Beginning in mid-July, eligible Californians will receive letters informing them that their debt has been cleared, per Fortune. Undue Medical Debt's leadership described the scale of the gift as "truly astonishing," noting it will unburden a quarter-million families who often have no idea relief is coming.

For Spiegel, the donation lands during a busy stretch in which he has also been pushing Snap's hardware ambitions, but the medical-debt gift is a notably different kind of statement, channeling personal wealth into one of the most stubborn financial burdens facing American households.