Tag Archives: medical debt

U.S. consumers burdened by medical debt received significant relief Tuesday as the Biden administration finalized a rule that will remove medical debt from credit reports. Set to take effect in March, the change will erase $49 billion in medical bills, benefiting approximately 15 million Americans. The rule, introduced by the …

Noam Levey, Minnesota Reformer The Biden administration announced a major initiative to protect Americans from medical debt, outlining plans to develop federal rules barring unpaid medical bills from affecting patients’ credit scores. The regulations, if enacted, would potentially help tens of millions of people who have medical debt on their …

Jake Johnson, Common Dreams Rep. Rashida Tlaib on Tuesday introduced legislation that would prohibit the inclusion of medical debt—which impacts more than 100 million people across the U.S.—on credit or consumer reports. “The use of credit reports—which frequently contain errors—is now more than ever a huge barrier to a thriving …

Casey Quinlan, Nevada Current U.S. Senators grilled the executives of three major credit reporting bureaus Thursday on whether their practices are transparent and fair to consumers, with Democrats frequently pressing the CEOs to remove medical debt from the reports. Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, chair of the Senate Committee on …

Karli Winfrey, Verite, Louisiana Illuminator The New Orleans City Council, following the footsteps of other local governments in Cook County, Illinois, and Toledo, Ohio, passed a last-minute line item in early December to the city’s 2023 budget: a $1.3 million expenditure that is earmarked to be used to erase more …

The Biden administration is taking action to lessen the burden for Americans dealing with medical debt, Vice President Kamala Harris said Monday. “Some debt collection companies harass consumers with dozens of phone calls a week,” Harris said during a briefing in the South Court Auditorium at the Eisenhower Executive Office …