Lawmakers in several states are working to expand medical debt protections for patients, even after the Trump administration reversed course and told states they don’t have authority to take action on credit reporting.
In Alaska and Michigan, legislators are nonetheless advancing bills to keep medical debt off consumer credit reports.
The attorneys general of California and Colorado said they would stand behind credit reporting laws enacted in those states in recent years, even as Colorado faces a lawsuit from debt collectors contesting such laws.
Indiana and Ohio lawmakers have dropped proposals to remove medical debt from credit reports but are pushing legislation that would extend other protections to patients who cannot pay their medical bills.
“Seventy-four percent of Alaska voters don’t think credit reports should include medical debt,” said state Rep. Genevieve Mina, a Democrat sponsoring a medical debt measure there. “I’m not going to wait on the courts on the medical debt issue.”
An estimated 100 million Americans are saddled with health care debt. And a growing number of red and blue states have enacted laws to protect patients.
But federal policy on such debt boomeranged this year when President Donald Trump’s administration chose not to defend federal regulations that would have removed medical debt from all Americans’ credit scores. And in October, Trump’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said that states do not have the authority to regulate consumer credit reports.
“It’s sort of a head-spinning, 180-degree reversal,” said Chi Chi Wu, an attorney with the National Consumer Law Center, which advocates for people with low incomes. She called the Consumer Financial Protectio …