Bernie Sanders released a plan to erase all of America's medical debt — about $81 billion — as part of his multifaceted strategy to dramatically reshape the provision of healthcare.

The Democratic presidential candidate's proposal, released Saturday morning, would not only forgive debt through government negotiation with collectors, but also would reform the means by which debt is collected and upend the system that he says only hurts people seeking protection by filing for bankruptcy. His plan would also replace credit reporting agencies like Equifax with a public credit registry that ignores medical debt when calculating scores.

“A staggering 79 million Americans struggle to pay their medical bills or are paying off medical debt, including more than half of those making less than $40,000 a year,” the Vermont senator said in Saturday's statement. “Last year alone, 8 million people were pushed into poverty due to medical expenses.”

Bernie also cited, as a motivation for the plan, the number of Americans driven to bankruptcy filing each year due to high medical costs.

“In fact, 66.5 percent of all bankruptcies are connected to medical issues — both because of the skyrocketing cost of care, and because of a patient’s time away from work and the subsequent expenses and lack of income," his proposal said. "Studies show that 500,000 people are bankrupted by medical expenses each and every year — and the true number may be far higher.”

The 500,000 figure comes from a March editorial in the American Journal of Public Health in which Dr. David Himmelstein, the lead author, sampled debtors' bankruptcy filings each year from 2013 to 2016 and found that medical costs were linked to 500,000 bankruptcies annually.

Yet Sanders' claim overstates the role of medical debt in causing bankruptcies. Himmelstein's research does not say the bankruptcies were directly attributable to medical bills; rather, it says that medical expenses played some role in those people's financial distress.

“Often, a bankruptcy has multiple causes, and disentangling one from the others isn’t something that can be done,” Himmelstein told the Washington Examiner in a recent interview. “There are a whole lot of things in life that have multiple causation and can’t be fully disentangled.”

Sanders' latest proposal adds to his platform for overhauling the healthcare system, which he depicts as fatally flawed and geared toward benefiting wealthy corporate leaders.

In calling for revamping the credit scoring system, Sanders cited the 2017 Equifax breach that exposed the private information of millions, adding that Equifax’s CEO “retired with a $90 million pay day.”

Bernie has set himself apart from fellow Democratic contenders with his plan. While other candidates, Sen. Elizabeth Warren most notably, have aligned themselves with Sanders’ Medicare for All Act, none have publicly released a plan to erase the estimated $81 billion in medical debt.

“Forcing additional stress and hardship on someone for the 'crime' of getting sick is immoral, unconscionable, and un-American. We will eliminate past-due medical debt, stop the predatory tactics of debt collectors, and ensure non-profit hospitals are serving their intended mission,” Sanders said.

