Vice President Harris, along with Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Rohit Chopra, announced Thursday that the administration will be proposing a new rule that would bar medical debt from impacting credit scores.
Harris noted how Black, Latino and rural communities are disproportionately impacted by medical debt as well as the way in which debt collectors "threaten, harass, and deceive consumers."
"For years, this medical debt has also harmed people's credit scores. And this is a point of emphasis: We know credit scores determine whether a person can have economic health and well — well-being, much less the ability to grow their wealth," Harris said in a press briefing.
Along with barring medical debts from being used by consumer reporting companies, debt collectors would be disallowed from using "coercive collection practices."
Consumer advocacy organizations celebrated the announcement.
"As the leader of an organization committed to erasing burdensome medical debts, I'm thrilled to see this action taken by the CFPB," Allison Sesso, CEO of RIP Medical Debt, said in a statement.
Chi Chi Wu, attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, called negative credit reporting one of the "biggest pain points for patients with medical debt."
"When we hear from consumers about medical debt, they often talk about the devastating consequences that bad credit from medical debts has had on their financial lives," said Wu. "A bad credit score doesn't just affect your ability to get credit, but also your employment prospects, insurance rates, and ability to get rental housing."
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