Hiding Medical Debt Won’t Make It Go Away
A consumer watchdog’s plan to eliminate health-care bills from credit records merely masks the inequities it aims to address.
It still hurts.
Photographer: Emily Elconin/Bloomberg
Paying for health care in America is a complicated business. In recent years, the government has taken valuable steps to reduce the harm that unexpected medical bills and unscrupulous debt collectors inflict on consumers. But a newly proposed rule, which would strip all health-care bills from credit reports, is a step backward.
Research by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has shown that medical debts aren’t reliable indicators of a borrower’s creditworthiness. Still, in 2022 the agency estimated that medical bills amounted to $88 billion of the debt on credit reports. That same year, the three biggest credit-reporting companies and two main credit-scoring companies voluntarily reduced their use of health-care debt.