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On January 7th, the CFPB finalized a rule barring medical debt from appearing on credit reports. The rule will wipe $49 billion in medical bills from 15 million American's credit reports. Medical debt is not the crisis that the administration has made it out to be. The CFPB's plan with medical debt could actually hurt the people it is meant to help. Isolating medical debt as a category separate from other debt doesn't really make economic sense. A person could choose to pay off all their medical debt and still have lots of credit card debt. Or they could do the reverse, and what little medical debt they had left could actually represent an improved financial situation.
Even those struggling with medical debt may not be well served by the CFPB rule. A recent NBER study found that wiping medical debt has no impact on credit access. So, at minimum, the CFPB rule is redundant. Because medical debts are rarely repaid, wiping them from patients' records doesn't free up funds, it further incentivizes patients not to pay.*
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RAISING THE BAR 
