The Biden administration on Thursday announced plans to remove medical bills from Americans’ credit reports in a push to end what it called coercive debt collection tactics that affect millions of consumers.
Proposals under consideration would help families financially recover from medical crises, stop debt collectors from coercing people into paying bills they may not even owe, and ensure that creditors are not relying on data that is often plagued with inaccuracies and mistakes, Vice President Kamala Harris and Rohit Chopra, the top consumer finance watchdog, announced.
Harris told reporters that more than 100 million Americans had unpaid medical debt.
“Many of the debts people have accrued are due to medical emergencies,” she said. “We know credit scores determine whether a person can have economic health and wellbeing, much less the ability to grow their wealth.”
Chopra’s agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, reported last year that roughly 20% of Americans have medical debt, but CFPB said its data also showed medical billing data is a poor indicator of whether consumers’ are likely to pay down traditional debts.
The Brookings Institution think tank also found big gaps in medical debt statistics, with some 80% of debt held by households with zero or negative net worth, and communities of color hit especially hard. For instance, 27% of Black households hold medical debt compared with 16.8% of non-Black households.
According to the CFPB, the Fair Credit Reporting Act restricts the use of medical information in credit decisions and credit reports. The agency on Thursday announced policy outlines that could give rise to new regulations.
So does this mean that those who can barely afford to pay for medical bills still have to pay them while those that are unable to pay will never have to?
In other words those who can barely pay will see their rates, premiums, fees, bills go up to shore up the cost of those who cannot pay.
Can we just all collectively say fuckit and only those making $1M+ a year should be the ones who have to pay?
Just because it doesn’t affect your credit score doesn’t mean you can’t be sued and have your wages garnished or worse. Don’t underestimate corporations on their efforts to retrieve money
If you get hospitalized in the U.S. and show effort to pay they can’t sue you or send it to collections last I knew. So if you wake up with a $100k hospitazation charge, you can pay $10 a month and say it is all you have and they can not come after you. So if you live for another 40 years, that would be a pain, but only cost $4800 total.
Taking it off your credit score just would make it so when you go to rent a roof over your head, those outstanding charges won’t show up I assume. Giving you better odds to be able to not be homeless and get the great opportunity to pay $1400 a month for a property you’ll never own.