So far, this week has really felt like a whole ass trash fire. It’s hard to catch your breath when every time you poke your head around the internet, someone’s trying to Make Imperialism Great Again or someone’s dying of bird flu (and we all know how that’s going to have to end if it starts to spread) or someone’s trying to dox Wikipedia editors or empower misogynists to call women “property” on social media, or some other gross ass shit.
You need a break, and we’re going to give you one!
Yesterday, Vice President Kamala Harris announced a final rule that will eliminate all medical debt from credit reports (which by the way are actually horrible, prone to mistakes, and should be done away with entirely)! Hooray! So now, if you found out after a life-saving emergency surgery that your insurance doesn’t actually cover whatever you got done and ended up with an absurd amount of medical debt it might take you years to pay off, you can still possibly own a car or a home or open a small business at some point in your life. Incredible!
The rule was created in conjunction with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Trump and Elon Musk very much intend eliminate. This (the elimination of the CFPB, not the medical debt rule) will be great news for corporations, who will be much better off without anyone out here protecting the consumers they are trying to screw.
“No one should be denied economic opportunity because they got sick or experienced a medical emergency. That is why President Biden and I cancelled over $1 billion in medical debt — part of our overall plan to forgive $7 billion by 2026 — with support from our American Rescue Plan, legislation that I advanced with my tie-breaking vote in the Senate. We also reduced the burden of medical debt by increasing pathways to forgiveness and cracking down on predatory debt collection tactics,” Vice President Harris said in a statement.
“Today, we are building on this meaningful work by announcing an unprecedented final rule that will make it so medical debt is no longer included in your credit score. This will be lifechanging for millions of families, making it easier for them to be approved for a car loan, a home loan, or a small-business loan. As someone who has spent my entire career fighting to protect consumers and lower medical bills, I know that our historic rule will help more Americans save money, build wealth, and thrive.”
Medical debt is something that affects over 100 million Americans, many of whom we can assume voted for Donald Trump and who will now claim that they were perfectly happy about their medical debt screwing up their credit, because that’s how they roll now. (The rest of them will assume, and the press will help them, that Donald Trump erased their debt. This will become settled common knowledge, and is one of the reason we at Wonkette exist to call bullshit.)
Of course, thanks to the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan, multiple states and municipalities have already eliminated about $1 billion in medical debt for 750,000 people.
Cook County, Illinois, has eliminated over $382 million in medical debt for over 210,000 residents.
New Jersey has eliminated $220 million in medical debt for over 120,00 residents.
Cleveland, Ohio, has eliminated nearly $137 million in medical debt for over 130,000 residents.
Toledo and Lucas County, Ohio, partnered to eliminate over $87 million in medical debt for over 140,000 residents.
New Orleans, Louisiana, has eliminated nearly $70 million in medical debt for 75,000 residents.
St. Paul, Minnesota, has eliminated $40 million in medical debt for over 30,000 residents.
Washington DC has eliminated $42 million in medical debt for over 60,000 residents.
Connecticut has eliminated $30 million in medical debt for 23,000 residents.
Wayne County, Michigan — that’s Detroit — has eliminated $27 million in medical debt for more than 46,000 residents.
Oakland County, Michigan, has eliminated $9 million in medical debt for more than 14,000 residents.
That’s pretty sweet! I wonder how many of them even knew that it happened. Perhaps Democrats should get better at bragging, as it turns out Americans don’t really catch on to subtlety too well.
This is something that will help a whole lot of people (myself included, I think — given a particularly unfortunate “insurance didn’t cover my blood test for anemia while I was unemployed” situation). It will, again, mean that they can get a small business loan, they can buy a home, or they can buy a car — or even just get a non-secured credit card again.
Or, at least, that is what we hope will happen. The rule has been “finalized,” but the Congressional Review Act seems to control in this case, and Donald Trump may very well decide that he wants people to continue to be haunted by their medical debt for the rest of their lives. I suppose we should just hope he forgets it even happened in the first place and is too busy complaining about whatever some pop star or athlete did to hurt his feelings that week to notice.
In the Catholic Church, 2025 is supposed to be a Jubilee year — a year of forgiveness of sins and debts that occurs every 25 years. Tragically, the debt jubilee seems to be the one aspect of Christianity that American Christians have never pushed to include in our secular lives (outside of Huey Long, who did actually propose that as a thing like a hundred years ago). We’d love to see more, but we won’t, for the obvious reasons.
Still, a little goes a long way, and it’s great to have at least one nice thing happening this week. Try to cling to that!
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
Medical Debt Is Actually Bad. And Guess Who It’s Hurting Most Of All?
So Many People In Connecticut Are Gonna Get Their Medical Debt Canceled
