The problem with Biden’s medical debt cancellation plan
The problem with Biden’s medical debt cancellation plan
The Biden administration’s creepy old white van is circling the neighborhood again, offering voters free candy if they’ll just climb inside. This time, Biden officials are using medical debt cancellation to entice their victims.
Earlier this year, the administration proposed a new rule under the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that would prohibit medical debt from being included in a person’s credit score. At that time, President Joe Biden’s team claimed medical debt was a poor predictor of whether someone is likely to repay a loan and that people should not be blocked from renting an apartment or getting a car loan due to these balances.
For the record, those balances total $49 billion spread across roughly 15 million people.
Now it seems Biden officials are taking it a step further, and while neither idea is rooted in sound economics, the latest iteration of their plan is particularly bonkers. Not only would this debt cancellation have devastating implications for our healthcare system, but it would compound the root causes that have made healthcare so pricey in the first place.