rules to block medical debt from being used to evaluate borrowers’ fitness for mortgages and other types of loans.
The rules would ban credit reporting agencies from incorporating medical debt when calculating credit scores. They would also bar lenders from using medical debt to determine loan eligibility. Those limitations removed medical collections under $500 and those that were less than a year past due; the proposed rules from the CFPB would cover all medical debts.
Harris and Chopra have chastised debt collectors, who they say are known to use credit reports as a cudgel to manipulate debtors into paying bills they know are incorrect. She said a problem with mail forwarding during her first year of college caused her to miss many medical bills, before she got a phone call warning that she was deep into collections. Repeated tests and procedures over the years brought a steady stream of bills, leading to financial anxiety that felt like “a general sense of doom,” she said.