A group of Senate Democrats, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren [D-Mass.] and Sen. Sherrod Brown [D-Ohio], the chair of the Senate Banking Committee, have opened an investigation into medical credit cards and the “potential harm they may inflict on patients.” The Senators sent letters to Synchrony Financial — which offers CareCredit …
Read More »Groups Want Medical Debts Deleted From Credit Reports
A group of more than 90 state and national consumer organizations have submitted a petition to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, asking it to issue a rule that would prohibit medical debts from appearing on consumers’ credit reports, if the debts resulted from medically necessary services. Background: The CFPB has …
Read More »CFPB Publishes Report Analyzing Impact of Medical Debt Credit Reporting Changes
Changes that have been announced and started to be put into place regarding how information about medical debts are furnished to the credit reporting agencies will remove those debts from the credit reports of about half of all consumers, according to an analysis of the data published yesterday by the …
Read More »Study Breaks Down Medical Debt Problem Across the Country
More than half of adults in the United States have gone into debt in the past five years because of a medical or dental bill, according to the results of a nationwide survey, and about 20% of those adults say they don’t ever expect to fully repay those debts. The …
Read More »More Than Half of Cancer Patients End Up With Medical Debts
More than half of individuals who are diagnosed with cancer end up in some form of medical debt, and 53% of those individuals have a debt that ends up in collection, according to data that was released yesterday by the American Cancer Society. Three-quarters of those who are diagnosed said …
Read More »New Report Pegs Unpaid Medical Debts at $195B
About 9% of all adults in America — which represents about 23 million people — owe at least $250 in medical debt, according to the results of a report released yesterday by the Kaiser Family Foundation. In total, Americans owed $195 billion in unpaid medical debt as of 2019, according …
Read More »Law Shortening SOL on Medical Debt in Virginia One Step From Governor’s Desk
A bill in the Virginia legislature is one step away from reaching the governor’s desk to be signed into law that would create a statute of limitations for collecting medical debt in the state. The bill, HB 573, passed in the state House of Delegates last month by a vote …
Read More »CFPB Publishes Report on Credit Reporting and Medical Debts, Vows to Take Action Against ‘Questionable’ Medical Bills
I have no proof of this, but my gut tells me that Rohit Chopra is a pretty good chess player. All the proof I need are the press releases that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been issuing over the past couple of months. To me, those releases are the …
Read More »GoFundMe Helps Those Who Need it ‘the Least,’ Researchers Conclude
We have all seen the campaigns, on Facebook and other places, and many have likely participated, but do GoFundMe campaigns actually work when it comes to covering the costs of medical debt? A report published in the American Journal of Public Health analyzed more than 437,000 campaigns during a five-year …
Read More »Another Benefit for Collectors to Promote When Working Medical Debts
After publishing research showing the amount of unpaid medical debt is significantly higher than previously thought, an economics professor at Stanford has continued to analyze his data and has reached another conclusion — the financial burden of medical debt is keeping individuals from going back to see their doctors, which …
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