The lame duck Biden administration’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a new rule Tuesday that will hide an estimated $49 billion in medical debt from credit reports.
The rule, which is slated to affect 15 million Americans, prohibits the inclusion of medical bills on credit reports and bars creditors from using medical information in making lending decisions. The policy specifically targets national credit-reporting companies Equifax, Experian and Transunion, which provide detailed evaluations of consumer finances to banks, employers and landlords.
“People who get sick shouldn’t have their financial future upended,” CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in a press release announcing the finalized rule. “The CFPB’s final rule will close a special carveout that has allowed debt collectors to abuse the credit reporting system to coerce people into paying medical bills they may not even owe.”
In the rule announcement, the CFPB cites its own research claiming medical debt is a poor predictor of a person’s likelihood to repay a loan. However, a 2019 study from the National Institutes of Health cited by Chopra in May 2023 found 66.5 percent of all personal bankruptcies were tied to medical bills.