The Biden administration announced a major initiative to protect Americans from medical debt on Thursday, outlining plans to develop federal rules barring unpaid medical bills from affecting patients’ credit scores.
I’d prefer a focus on eliminating the for-profit health care system, or the credit score system. Adding more band-aids to an infected wound is a bad idea.
Honestly, if we’re going to have credit, as a society, then credit scores aren’t a terrible solution. Otherwise it’s just you pleading your case to whatever bank employee you happen to be sitting in front of. In the past, that system hasn’t gone well for certain groups that tend to face discrimination.
I get that, but it’s a bit of a red herring. Credit scores ultimately exist to mitigate risk for bankers, and the idea that it equalizes results for the population is secondary. Bankers should be taking on risks with loans, because that’s what the return is based on. If we remove the risk for bankers, but they still make interest, the system is broken.
It is worth noting that credit scores don’t necessarily eliminate bias, it just adds another step. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn if you could predict an individual’s credit score based on non-financial facts because some of the old biases were cooked into the system (by proxy or not). (I very much suspect this is true but don’t have it in me to go hunt down papers right this instant…)
An improvement over arguing your case with the teller, yes, but not necessarily flawless.
For-profit health care system should honestly just eliminated even if it takes millions of job away, it should have never existed. Then fixing a problem with the credit system, where paying off all your credit drop your credit scores. It should increase for that as it tells the bank “Look this person paid it off, and is stable.” Instead of “Paid it off, shame on you, we didn’t make any money from it.”
What do we replace credit scores with? How should banks determine who can be trusted with what loan?
It’s a good question. Consolidated credit scores like FICO have only existed for the last 40 years or so.
I don’t have a good answer at the moment, but I’ll also say that making sure that bankers are comfortable to the nth degree has not done the well for the average person in the US. Perhaps they could simply take on the risk.
Different take: how about we outlaw credit scores and creating dossiers by companies?
I think it’s generally a good idea, but could that incentivize people to just not pay their medical debt, and if so, what ramifications does that have?
If I’m saddled with a $100,000 medical bill that won’t impact my credit score no matter how long I put it off for, wouldn’t I just want to put it off for as long as possible (ie never pay it ever)?
If that happens, what do doctors/hospitals do if they never get paid? Does the cost of medical care go up for everybody, or could it eventually force them to start lobbying for single-payer, so that they’ll get paid something rather than nothing? Or do hospitals start restricting who can pay or do they start making you put up collateral before they’ll perform surgeries? So they’ll take your house if you don’t pay up?
Who cares? Healthcare should be free anyway.
But I’ll bite. With as much as hospitals gouge you on every single thing, they can afford to have some of their patients not pay. No doctor is going to starve cause you won’t pay your medical debt.
I doubt it.
Lmao! Too late! A bankruptcy and foreclosure too late!
Fuck credit scores in general, they shouldn’t exist.
You know what would be even better? Not allowing medical debt in the first place.
We really need a bot to chime in whenever someone shows up with Infinite Leftist arguments.
Ok? We could just pass single payer healthcare instead and that would have accomplished the same thing and more.
There are too many Republicans in the legislature to make that happen. Give Democrats a sizeable majority, enough to make Manchin and Sinema’s votes to not count, and sure. Until then, this is great
So if an unpaid debt can’t affect your credit score, can you essentially just ignore it without significant impact to your life? Like the only recourse the hospital would have is to sue you I assume?
They write it off and sell it to a collection agency already.
Once it’s in collections the hospital doesn’t care and will no longer see it even if you pay the debt collector.
Such a great change!
Ok gloomer
