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.

  • sudo22@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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?

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      They can still sell it to a debt collector who can harass you. I had one do that and those shitstains called me up at work. Really shouldn’t have given me his name and made his work address easy to find, would have made it that much harder for me to file a police report against him personally.

      Hope the five dollars they tried to get out of me was worth it.

    • Earthwormjim91@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

    • silverbax@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Or, they would be forced to lower their prices to what people can actually afford.

      Or, they could then figure out that lobbying for single payer health care will be more profitable than not being able to charge ‘everything you own’ but not be able to threaten you.