The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has taken major steps to help people with medical debt in its nearly 14-year history. It issued rules barring medical debt from Americans’ credit reports and went after debt collectors who pressured customers to pay bills they didn’t owe. But in early February, the Trump administration moved to effectively shutter the agency.
“An Arm and a Leg” host Dan Weissmann talks with credit counselor Lara Ceccarelli about how the CFPB has helped clients at the nonprofit where she works, and how she’s navigating the sudden change.
Consumer rights advocate Chi Chi Wu, an attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, describes the court battle she and her colleagues are mounting to slow down the agency’s dismantling, and where things could go from here.
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Transcript: Medical-Debt Watchdog Gets Sidelined by the New Administration
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Transcript: A medical-debt watchdog gets sidelined by the new administration
Dan: Hey there–
Lara Ceccarelli works for American Financial Solutions. That’s a non-profit credit counseling agency.
Lara spends her days talking with people who have bills they can’t pay, debt collectors chasing them, including for medical bills.
On a recent Sunday night, Lara was winding down her day the way she usually does.
Lara: I tend to read the news before bed. I usually find that it gives me less anxiety, uh, when I have a clear picture of, you know, what’s happening in the world and I don’t feel like I’m in the dark. And yeah, that Sunday was an exception.
Dan: That Sunday was February 9, and that evening big news had broken about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau– C F P B, for short.
A federal agency that’s basically a watchdog for consumer rights of all kinds.
So, for years, whenever Lara’s talked to a client, and it sounds like a debt collector is violating their rights — which happens a lot– she has referred the client to the CFPB. And it has worked.
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