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.
This is the first thing I think about whenever I check my credit score and it has magically gone down 5 points even though literally nothing in my life changed and all my bills were paid on time.
It’s so fucking infuriating that these companies that can’t even keep their (our) data safe have such inordinate and arbitrary control over our lives and what we can do with them.
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."
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.
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?
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.
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 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.
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.
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