The lame duck Biden administration’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a new rule Tuesday that will hide an estimated $49 billion in medical debt from credit reports.
The rule, which is slated to affect 15 million Americans, prohibits the inclusion of medical bills on credit reports and bars creditors from using medical information in making lending decisions. The policy specifically targets national credit-reporting companies Equifax, Experian and Transunion, which provide detailed evaluations of consumer finances to banks, employers and landlords. (RELATED: Biden’s Top Bank Cop Who Oversaw Wave Of Regional Failures Resigns Ahead Of Potential Fight With Incoming Trump Admin)
“People who get sick shouldn’t have their financial future upended,” CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in a press release announcing the finalized rule. “The CFPB’s final rule will close a special carveout that has allowed debt collectors to abuse the credit reporting system to coerce people into paying medical bills they may not even owe.”
In the rule announcement, the CFPB cites its own research claiming medical debt is a poor predictor of a person’s likelihood to repay a loan. However, a 2019 study from the National Institutes of Health cited by Chopra in May 2023 found 66.5 percent of all personal bankruptcies were tied to medical bills.
CFPB Finalizes Rule to Remove Medical Bills from Credit Reports
This is not “merely” a death blow to medicine in the United States. If this goes unchallenged – it’ll lead to national collapse dragging the rest of the world down the drain with it.@realDonaldTrump it's now or… pic.twitter.com/KpYAztUlcu— The Rogue Dermatologist (@YuvalBibiMDArt) January 7, 2025
Equifax requested the CFPB withdraw the rule in August after it was proposed in June, arguing the CFPB failed to prove medical debts are inaccurately reported, and thus that banning the use of medical history in lending decisions is “not permitted” under federal law: “This arbitrary and capricious finding … (I) fails to consider Congress’s intent to authorize the reporting of medical debt information; (II) does not include a meaningful cost-benefit analysis; (III) does not offer substantial evidence to support its assertion that medical debt information is less predictive; (IV) does not provide substantial evidence that medical debt information is inaccurate; and (V) improperly distinguishes between medical debt owed to healthcare providers (or their agents or assignees) and medical debt owed to credit card issuers.” […]
— Read More: dailycaller.com
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