Two West Coast-based nonprofit health insurers — SCAN Health Group and CareOregon — recently announced a joint effort to help pay off medical debt in their regions. But the leaders of both companies acknowledge it isn't enough to impact the burden of health care costs on the American population.

The problem will only be solved, the company CEOs told Yahoo Finance in a recent interview, when insurers and medical care providers unravel the country's knotty billing system.

"We've normalized the abnormal. It is not normal in most countries for medical care to be something that you fear because it will put you in debt from which it's impossible to recover," said SCAN CEO Sachin Jain.

In the US, 23 million people are affected by medical debt, according to a March 2022 analysis by Kaiser Family Foundation. Over the years, news coverage of sky-high surprise bills has led to new laws to help curb costs and regular reporting of astronomical hospital bills has forced entities to forgive or reduce payment amounts.

But the problem of medical debt persists.

New York-based RIP Medical Debt, said in a June 2022 letter to CMS, that science shows medical debt can also negatively impact a person's physical health.

"When individuals carry medical debt, they are less likely to seek health care due to fears about cost and are more likely to use substances and struggle with mental health... [and] delay key life decisions ranging from saving for retirement to attending school," the nonprofit's CEO, Allison Sesso, wrote. "Medical debt ripples through families and communities and disproportionately affects people of color further exacerbating the racial wealth gap."

RIP was launched in 2014 and has attracted funding to help address the issue. The company uses donations to help purchase medical debt in bulk at a steep discount in order to pay it off. To date, the company has helped more than 6 million individuals and families and paid off more than $9 billion in medical debt.