CFPB Director Chopra Joins White House Event On Medical Debt

Today, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra participated in a White House event to announce new actions by the CFPB to reduce the burden of medical debt on American families and address illegal medical debt collection practices.

At the event, Director Chopra provided remarks and moderated a panel of impacted individuals who each shared their own experiences with medical debt.

Prior to the event, CFPB issued guidance to prevent families from being targeted by illegal medical debt collection tactics. The guidance takes on the illegal collection of medical bills that are false, inflated, or not actually owed.

The CFPB also published a Consumer Advisory with information for consumers about their rights under the law, and what actions they can take when they receive bills they do not owe or where the amount is incorrect.

Additionally, the CFPB published a blog post highlighting billing issues that occur when non-profit hospitals fail to provide financial assistance. Under current law, tax-exempt hospitals are required to offer financial assistance to help offset health care costs for low-income patients. However, the CFPB has received complaints suggesting shortcomings in hospitals’ eligibility criteria and application processes, and that also indicate that hospitals may bill and initiate collections against patients who have received or should be eligible for financial assistance.

Today’s actions are part of a larger initiative to address unfair and coercive medical debt collection and practices, including a proposed rule to ban medical bills from people’s credit reports.

Administration participants in today’s event included:

• Lael Brainard, Assistant to the President and Director of the National Economic Council
• Kristine Lucius, Domestic Policy Advisor to the Vice President
• Rohit Chopra, Director, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
• Seileen Mullen, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, U.S. Department of Defense