Investigation: Many U.S. hospitals sue patients for debts or threaten their credit

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Despite growing evidence of the harm caused by medical debt, hundreds of U.S. hospitals maintain policies to aggressively pursue patients for unpaid bills, using tactics such as lawsuits, selling patient accounts to debt buyers, and reporting patients to credit rating agencies, a KHN investigation shows.

The collection practices are commonplace among all types of hospitals in all regions of the country, including public university systems, leading academic institutions, small community hospitals, for-profit chains, and nonprofit Catholic systems.

Individual hospital systems have come under scrutiny in recent years for suing patients. But the KHN analysis shows the practice is widespread, suggesting most of the nation's approximately 5,100 hospitals serving the general public have policies to use legal action or other aggressive tactics against patients.

And although industry officials say they are careful about how they target patients for unpaid bills, few institutions have renounced what federal rules call "extraordinary collection actions," even as medical debt forces millions of Americans to cut back on food and other essentials, drain retirement savings, and make other difficult sacrifices.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/12/21/1144491711/investigation-many-u-s-hospitals-sue-patients-for-debts-or-threaten-their-credit

Eradicating diseases or hounding after medical bills.

They chose hounding after medical bills.

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1. Rep. Porter Introduces Bill to Provide Medical Debt Relief, April 7, 2020

https://porter.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=120

Congresswoman’s legislation would protect the credit of patients with medical debt


WASHINGTON—Congresswoman Katie Porter (CA-45) today introduced bipartisan legislation with more than 60 of her colleagues that would remove paid off or settled medical debt from a patient’s credit report, as well as institute a 360-day waiting period before new medical debt can be reported.

“Nobody chooses to get sick and take on medical debt,” Congresswoman Porter said. “It is wrong for families to be saddled with years and years of additional financial hardships because of an illness or injury they weren’t able to plan for. Because of the Administration’s failure to waive cost-sharing requirements for patients, we’re already seeing Americans with thousands of dollars in medical bills.”

Porter was joined by Sen. Jeff Merkley (OR), who re-introduced a companion bill in the Senate.

“Imagine recovering from an intense medical event and paying off all of your medical bills, only to be haunted by that debt for years on end,” Sen. Merkley said. “Tens of millions of Americans have lived this reality—a nightmare that is only going to get worse as we battle the coronavirus pandemic. No patient or family should lose their credit opportunities because they got sick, so especially now, Congress should pass the Medical Debt Relief Act.”

Congresswoman Porter’s legislation also earned the support of the National Association of Consumer Advocates, the Consumer Federation of America, Americans for Financial Reform, and the National Patient Advocate Foundation.

A longtime commercial law professor and consumer protection advocate, Porter has made consumer protection a top priority in Congress. She stood up to leaders of both parties to speak up against a bill that would prevent the IRS from creating its own program to allow Americans to file their taxes for free. At a Financial Services Committee hearing last year, she exposed Director Kraninger for her unfamiliarity with the basics of consumer lending. She called out Equifax CEO Mark Begor for arguing in federal court that his company’s data breach did not harm consumers.

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2. The culprit: The greed-driven for-profit wealthcare system.

It's not about health. Or Care. Or saving lives. It's about CORPORATE GREED and that's the #1 priority of it all.