For many Ohioans, getting out of debt is a serious and seemingly impossible effort. The bills keep coming and the interest rates keep piling up. It seems like no matter how hard they try, they can never get ahead of the bills. And this isn’t just a problem facing the poor, it could easily happen to any one of us. In fact, Ohioans have an average of $5,583 in credit card debt—more than 10 percent of the median household income.

There are options for those drowning in debt. They can declare bankruptcy—but that leaves a black mark on their credit report for 7 to 10 years. They can consult a credit counselor—but they will pay the full principal amount with some interest. Or they can consult a debt settlement company.

To understand how debt settlement can help Ohioans, let’s consider a single mom of two with $10,000 of credit card debt—we’ll call her Sandra. Sandra never thought that she would find herself in debt—she is a college graduate, earned a decent income, and lived within her means. She had a clean bill of financial health until her employer suddenly laid her off. Sandra struggled for months to find a job, and in the meantime, she relied on credit cards to make ends meet for her and her two daughters.

Unfortunately, Sandra can’t keep up with the growing payments. To get out from under her mountain of debt, Sandra considers her options and decides to hire a debt settlement company.

In Sandra’s case, the company negotiates on her behalf to reduce the total amount that she owes by 40 percent—to $6,000—and arranges a payment plan. Another benefit is that Sandra doesn’t pay the company until she accepts the settlement plan they propose and makes a payment towards that plan. She then pays the debt settlement company a fee of 15 to 25 percent of her original total debt—in her case, $1,500 to $2,500. This option allows Sandra to avoid the black mark of bankruptcy, get out of debt, and pay considerably less than the total amount she originally owed.

While debt settlement is an attractive option for Sandra, Ohio restricts the ability of debt settlement companies to legally operate within the state. Ohio’s broadly-written “debt adjusting” law does not reflect the way in which debt settlement companies operate. For example, the law says that companies shall pay to creditors all funds received by their clients within 30 days. However, debt settlement companies simply negotiate on their clients’ behalf; they do not receive funds to pay bills on their clients’ behalf.

The law also imposes harsh price caps on “debt adjusting” services that are intended to protect consumers. However, these price caps are unnecessary because consumers are already protected by federal regulations that mandate disclosure of the costs, benefits, and risks of debt settlement programs.

Policymakers should fix these problems during the lame duck session by clarifying the services debt settlement companies can legally offer and by allowing the companies and their clients, not arbitrary statutes, to set the price for those services. House Bill 182, which passed the House and is pending in the Senate, includes these two important reforms.

These changes would enable debt settlement companies to confidently operate in Ohio and offer their services to Sandra and the thousands of Ohioans struggling to pay-off their debt.

Greg R. Lawson is a research fellow at The Buckeye Institute.