“Not long ago, Catherine did something many other people have done. She ignored a medical bill,” Annie Lowrey writes over at The Atlantic. “Catherine, who asked me to use only her middle name to protect her privacy, is a white-collar worker in Pennsylvania. ‘About 10 — Jesus, 12 — years ago, I was diagnosed with Crohn’s,’ she told me, which led her to rack up debt, some of it related to her use of a $46,000-a-year IV-infusion drug. After her mother’s death from brain cancer in 2022, she decided to get her life in order. ‘I’m on this big journey,’ she told me. ‘I had bills going back to an urgent-care visit I made in college. I was going to get on top of it.’ Yet when she started calling hospitals, doctor’s offices, and collection agencies, she realized that nobody could tell her what she was paying for and why she was being charged a certain amount. Some bills had been forgiven; some were miscoded. … She told me, ‘My takeaway was: Nobody knows what these bills are for.’ So she did not pay them. She tossed new ones in the trash. She sent unknown numbers straight to voicemail. Getting on top of her debts meant ignoring them. She wants to pay her bills, she told me; she’s not the type to walk out on the tab. But “it’s like no one even knows how much my procedures are going to cost,” she said. … In years past, Catherine’s medical debt would have accumulated late fees and interest. Her creditors might have sued, seizing her assets or garnishing her wages. Her credit score would have plummeted, making it hard or even impossible for her to rent an apartment or buy a home. Some doctors might have refused to give her care. Some companies might have refused to employ her. But now, all of Catherine’s debts might not augur much of anything. A quiet, confusing revolution is happening in the world of medical debt, one that — and I cannot believe I am typing this — actually bodes well for consumers. … Two in five American adults owe something to a health-care provider, and 3 million people each owe more than $10,000. … People often have no idea how much a medical procedure might cost, what their insurance might cover, or how much they might end up owing. Shopping around is rare and difficult to do, and sometimes — if you’re brought to a hospital after an accident, say — impossible. Billing offices fudge the numbers they send to insurers and patients. … Half the time the bill is wrong. … In early 2022, municipal governments began purchasing and erasing medical debt, using money from the Covid-era American Rescue Plan. Private industry made changes too. In early 2022, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, the country’s three major credit bureaus, announced that they would not put medical debts on consumers’ credit reports until the bills were a year old. … Now a truly colossal change is pending. The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau has proposed excluding medical bills from credit reports altogether.” Annie Lowrey, “‘Nobody Knows What These Bills Are For’: Americans shouldn’t have their credit ruined over a medical bill,” The Atlantic.
