Senator Bernie Sanders and Congressman Ro Khanna just released a bill designed to cancel medical debt, reports Joan Greve for The Guardian. Senator Jeff Merkley and Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib are co-sponsoring the bill. While medical debt is more of a problem among working Americans than among people with Medicare, older adults face significant medical debt and people in Medicare Advantage are more likely to face medical debt than people in Traditional Medicare. Imagine if everyone in the US were medical-debt free.
Through a federal grant program, under the bill, all patient debt today would be cancelled. The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act would be reformed so that creditors could not collect unpaid medical bills.
The legislation also would change the way physicians, hospitals and other providers can bill. It would change the Consumer Credit Reporting Act so that credit agencies could not report the fact that people have unpaid medical bills. As a result, people’s unpaid medical bills would not ruin their credit ratings.
The bill is designed to help ensure people’s financial security when they get sick. They should not go bankrupt because they are diagnosed with cancer, suffer a stroke or have another medical emergency. One hundred million people in the US today are faced with medical debt. Unpaid medical bills total more than $22o billion according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Medical debt is a particularly serious burden for people with low incomes, people with disabilities, Hispanic and Black Americans. It is also common among cancer survivors, 33 percent of whom have been forced into debt.
Will Congress pass a bill that cancels medical debt? It’s unlikely. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives has little interest, even though such a bill draws bi-partisan support. Two years ago, a YouGov survey found that two-thirds of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, believe Congress should step in to address medical debt.
Here’s more from Just Care:
Leave a Reply