On March 1, 2022, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
(CFPB) issued a report titled Medical Debt Burden in the United
States (Report) highlighting the complicated and
burdensome nature of the medical billing system in the United
States. In the Report, the CFPB attributes its heightened
interest in medical debt collections and reporting to the COVID-19
pandemic, which has caused many consumers and frontline workers to
incur pandemic-related medical debt.
The CFPB addresses the impact of medical debt on credit scores
at length in its Report, and states clearly that it intends to act
to ensure that the consumer credit reporting system is not used to
coerce patients and their families into paying questionable medical
bills. The CFPB explains that research has found that
“medical collections are less predictive of future consumer
credit performance than nonmedical collections,” and that
“paid medical collections are less predictive of future
performance than unpaid
