U.S. Senators Reverend Raphael Warnock (D-GA) and Chair of the Senate Banking committee Sherrod Brown (D-OH) pushed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau(CFPB) Director Rohit Chopra to finalize the proposed rulemaking which would eliminate medical debt from credit reports and prohibit consumer reporting agencies from sharing medical debt information with creditors.
Senator Warnock is a member of the Senate Banking committee and chair of the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection, which has jurisdiction over CFPB. In Georgia, where 640,000 people don’t have access to affordable health care because state leaders have refused to expand Medicaid, 27% of rural citizens have medical collections on their credit report—ten percentage points higher than the national average.
“Finalizing the rule would protect families and keep them from being unjustly penalized for seeking medical care,” said the lawmakers in the letter. “This rule would provide vital protections: It would bar lenders from broadly using information about medical debt to make credit eligibility determinations, prohibit the inclusion of medical debt on credit reports, prohibit creditors from repossessing medical devices, and recognize the unique nature of medical debt and not penalize people for seeking treatment and care.”
“This issue is far too important to remain unsettled any longer. The rule would protect millions of people across the nation, and we respectfully urge you to swiftly finalize this rule,” concluded the Senators in the letter.
