The Patient, the Doctor and the Bill Collector by Robert Goff

Author:Robert Goff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hoku House
Published: 2016-03-22T00:00:00+00:00

If you really want to know your rights and better use the tools and responses such as those covered earlier, seek out and buy the Debt Resisters’ Operation Manual, published by Strike Debt. Caution: You just may turn a bit radical when you finish working through 200+ pages of diatribes and complaints about debt inequities in our economic system.9

On the other hand, this may be just the resource needed in your case.10

A Serious Road-Bump — Your Credit Report

However gruesome it may be to deal with exorbitant medical bills, billing mistakes that never seem to get resolved, and the bill collectors that just won’t go away, those agencies can have a major impact on your credit report, which can linger for years.

Do you realize that some collection agencies or providers using service bureaus, once they realize that their dunning efforts have failed, will submit your name and account to national credit-reporting bureaus? Even a $15 co-pay can sink your credit score. This medical debt showing on your Experian or TransUnion report may prevent you from buying that home, getting that job, or renting that apartment?

Horrible.

But, there is a lot of positive action being taken on this front which will provide you some (future) hope.

According to a recent article in NerdWallet, analytics industry giant FICO (NYSE: FICO) has set about to reform its present credit-reporting system to differentiate medical from non-medical collection agency accounts.11 As FICO’s site declares:

“This will help ensure that medical collections have a lower impact on the score, commensurate with the credit risk they represent. These enhancements lead to a more predictive score. The median FICO Score for consumers whose only major negative references are medical collections will increase by 25 points.”12

This will not come about overnight, as their “FICO Score 9” product first has to be adopted by the three credit bureaus. As NerdWallet points out, “FICO 9” will give less weight to medical debt, but it will not complexly eliminate the effects of that debt on your credit score. On a bright note, FICO 9 will also disregard medical accounts in collections that were ultimately paid off or settled — as much as half of all medical accounts listed on credit reports.

Your best defense here is to read up on how to get medical — and other — accounts off of your credit report and then act early on. Again, NerdWallet to the rescue:

As of August 2014, the credit scoring model most lenders rely on treats paid and unpaid collections accounts the same. This means that even if you pay the bill, your score likely won’t improve as a result (although it will get the bill collector off your back). The best thing to do in this case is to be patient and continue good credit habits, like paying your other bills on time and keeping your credit-card balances low. This will help your credit score bounce back over time.13

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