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100 million Americans have medical debt, new investigation shows

Brooke Davis, photographed Thursday, June 30, 2022 in McDonough, Ga., has been struggling with medical debt. Starting July 1st, the three major U.S. credit reporting companies will stop counting paid medical debt on the reports that banks, potential landlords and others use to judge creditworthiness. The companies also will start giving people a year to resolve delinquent medical debt that has been sent to collections before reporting it — up from six months previously.

Environment & Public Health

100 million Americans have medical debt, new investigation shows

By  Stephanie Kim
   

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Three major credit reporting bureaus are making sweeping changes to how they report medical debt. But this debt represents just a fraction of how much money tens of millions of Americans owe for health care, according to a new reporting partnership between Kaiser Health News and NPR.

Reset learns more about what’s driving America’s medical debt crisis and who’s most affected.

GUEST: Noam Levey, senior correspondent for Kaiser Health News; lead investigator of the Diagnosis: Debt series

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