Trump Team Fights to Ensure the Sick Stay Poor
Greed, not love, drives anti-consumer agenda
Let’s start here: The very existence of medical debt represents a moral failing of society.
To face crippling debt - debt that ends up on credit reports and thereby limits access to loans, to housing, and to employment - all because you got sick, that’s just plain wrong.
The Biden Administration made an attempt to take away the sting - removing medical debt from credit reports.
Chloe Rogers of Americans for Financial Reform writes:
Medical debt has zero value for predicting whether someone will pay their debts — which is the whole point of a credit score! That’s a fact backed by the CFPB’s own research. Including it on credit reports doesn’t help lenders assess risk — it simply punishes people for being sick, hospitalized, or denied insurance coverage.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) created a rule that would have offered relief for the 15 million Americans with a total of $49 billion in medical debt in collections - and showing up on credit reports.
That rule didn’t erase the debt.
It did, however, remove it from credit reports - meaning sickness and subsequent debt no longer negatively impacted access to credit.
A huge relief.
Just ask 62-year-old David Deeds of Texas, who owes tens of thousands of dollars in medical debt as a result of cancer treatments.
NPR reports that Deeds thought the Biden-era rule would finally give him relief - and now, he’s facing a reality of wrecked credit thanks to the Trump Administration backing down from the medical debt rule.
As Rogers notes:
The Trump-appointed leadership of the CFPB and the lobby group for credit bureaus, the Consumer Data Industry Association, just asked a federal judge to vacate the medical debt rule. The Trump administration is siding with the credit bureaus, effectively asking the court to strike down the very protections the CFPB once championed
Yes, in Trump’s America, medical debt should not only exist, but also prevent you from accessing credit, housing, or possibly a job. Trump essentially says: Too bad you got sick, now stay poor.
Deeds explains the reality of the Trump position:
"My credit was and is very important to me, because it is necessary to secure housing, transportation, and employment, and make sure that I'm never homeless again," Deeds said in an affidavit filed on Feb. 24, by a consumer advocacy group intervening in the lawsuit.
While some states are taking action to protect consumers - and prevent medical debt from wrecking lives - a federal rule would protect all people in the U.S.
Now, though, that hope is gone - and millions of Americans will face the nightmare of crippling debt all because they dared to get sick.
AdvocateAndy explains how the shameless credit bureaus profit off medical debt and making sick people who can't afford to pay, pay anyway! Did I mention the bureaus are heartless and have no souls? AdvocateAndy does!
Actually the fight to remove medical debt from credit reports began much earlier (2002?) but the greedy thieves who run the Big 3 credit bureaus and their lobby CDIA bought some friends (trust me, they have no real ones) and their political donations have kept medical debt on reports! Of course, the orange one has flipped the CFPB to oppose consumers, too!