Fighting extremism of absurd medical bills - Aggressive medical debt collection practices target of bipartisan Ohio bill
A bipartisan pair of state lawmakers has proposed a plan to rein in the ways health care providers in Ohio can collect on medical debts.
Their legislation, under committee review in the Ohio House, would prohibit providers from garnishing debtors’ wages. Garnishment is a legal term that refers to the process of judges allowing the providers to seize up to 25% of their former patients’ wages before they go out as paychecks.
House Bill 257 would also reduce from 8% to 3% the legal interest rate that runs on collection judgments and would prohibit health care providers from reporting unpaid medical debts to the agencies that establish people’s credit scores. Bad credit scores can limit access to loans and raise costs for borrowers.
In interviews, the sponsors – Rep. Jean Schmidt, a Cincinnati-area Republican, and Rep. Michele Grim, a Toledo Democrat – said medical debt isn’t like a car loan or credit card debt. Injuries and illnesses are usually unplanned, they said, and customers have little ability to price shop or weigh pros and cons before executing what are often expensive purchases for health needs.
https://signalohio.org/aggressive-medical-debt-collection-practices-target-of-bipartisan-ohio-bill/
You can have the world's best healthcare for patients or for wage garnishment, but you can't have it for both.
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