CLEVELAND — When medical debt is left unpaid, your credit score could be affected. Now, President Biden is proposing a ban on medical debt affecting people’s credit reports.
There are some important caveats here to Biden’s plan. This rule wouldn’t go into effect until next year, which is predicated on whether President Biden is re-elected in November. If it does go through, the ban would help give relief to millions of people.
“Never thought something like this would happen to us,” said Julie Hleba in a previous News 5 Diagnosis Debt report about her $37,000 medical bill.
Since 2019, our Diagnosis Debt series has found numerous people with questionable medical bills, some in the tens of thousands of dollars.
“No one really had eyes on it…until you were on it,” said Dan Mascarenhas about his $57,000 medical bill.
Now, Biden and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or CFPB want to help. The CFPB reports that 15 million Americans have $ 49 billion in medical debt, bringing down their credit scores.
News 5 and cities like Cleveland and Toldeo have bought citizens’ medical debt for pennies on the dollar to the tune of hundreds of millions worth of debt.
“We want to try to find pathways to make a healthier Cleveland, and we think this is a huge way of doing it,” said Cleveland City Council President Blaine Griffin.
The new Biden/CFPB rule would also address the issues of complex and erroneous medical bills that can end up on patients’ credit reports.
Last month, we reported a billing error for a former bus driver in our area that threatened to hit his credit score.
“And they just told me if the bill was not resolved by the 6th or 10th of June that it was going to go on my credit report,” said the bus driver, Chris Hoyt.
RELATED: Big medical bill + no real answers = 1 huge headache for former school bus driver
We’ve also reported how former President Trump worked on getting rid of surprise billing, out-of-network, ridiculous charges like the one a man from Findlay received whose daughter merely got a urine screening.
"It's almost not believable. You look believable,” President Trump laughed during a 2019 news conference. “But he's right, $17,850 for a urine test."
RELATED: Ohio doctor speaks out after showing $18,000 urine test bill to President Trump
The CFPB reports that the three big credit reporting agencies and some states have already taken steps to eliminate medical debt affecting credit scores.
Ohio has a statute of limitations of six years, which means you can’t be sued for a debt that is more than six years old.
News 5 Investigators found that some analysts warn of potential drawbacks about removing people’s medical debt from credit reports. They question whether hospitals could turn away patients and jack up costs because people aren't paying their bills. However, it’s important to note that just because the debt is not on your credit report doesn't mean there aren't other ways for hospitals to collect their money.