“No one should be denied access to opportunity simply because they have experienced a medical emergency.”AdvertisementThe rules would ban credit reporting agencies from incorporating medical debt when calculating credit scores. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump did not seek to remove medical debt from consumers’ credit reports during his four years in the White House. The figure used to be significantly higher — the agency in March 2022 found that medical bills appeared on about 43 million credit reports — but major credit bureaus voluntarily adopted limits on which medical bills were included in reports. Medical debt “can lead to other kinds of financial vulnerability,” Cynthia Cox, vice president at KFF, a nonpartisan health-care research organization that has analyzed medical debt, wrote in a text message. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and other lawmakers in May proposed legislation that would eliminate all existing medical debt and impose restrictions to limit future medical debt.

Source: Washington Post June 11, 2024 21:34 UTC