[Congressional Bills 112th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 2149 Introduced in Senate (IS)]

112th CONGRESS
  2d Session
                                S. 2149

 To exclude from consumer credit reports medical debt that has been in 
 collection and has been fully paid or settled, and for other purposes.


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                             March 1, 2012

Mr. Merkley (for himself, Mr. Brown of Ohio, Mr. Durbin, Mr. Menendez, 
 Mr. Schumer, and Mr. Harkin) introduced the following bill; which was 
read twice and referred to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban 
                                Affairs

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
 To exclude from consumer credit reports medical debt that has been in 
 collection and has been fully paid or settled, and for other purposes.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Medical Debt Responsibility Act of 
2012''.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS AND PURPOSE.

    (a) Findings.--Congress finds that--
            (1) medical debt is unique, and Americans do not choose 
        when accidents happen or when illness strikes;
            (2) medical debt collection issues affect both insured and 
        uninsured consumers;
            (3) according to credit evaluators, medical debt 
        collections are more likely to be in dispute, inconsistently 
        reported, and of questionable value in predicting future 
        payment performance because it is atypical and nonpredictive;
            (4) nevertheless, medical debt that has been completely 
        paid off or settled can significantly damage the credit score 
        of a consumer for years;
            (5) as a result, consumers may be denied credit or pay 
        higher interest rates when buying a home or obtaining a credit 
        card;
            (6) healthcare providers are increasingly turning to 
        outside collection agencies to help secure payment from 
        patients, coming at the expense of the consumer, because 
        medical debts are not typically reported unless they become 
        assigned to collections;
            (7) in fact, medical bills account for more than half of 
        all non-credit related collection actions reported to consumer 
        credit reporting agencies;
            (8) the issue of medical debt affects millions of 
        consumers;
            (9) according to the Commonwealth Fund, medical bill 
        problems or accrued medical debt affects roughly 73,000,000 
        working-age adults in America; and
            (10) in 2010, 30,000,000 working-age American adults were 
        contacted by a collection agency for unpaid medical bills.
    (b) Purpose.--It is the purpose of this Act to exclude from 
consumer credit reports medical debt that had been characterized as 
debt in collection for credit reporting purposes and has been fully 
paid or settled.

SEC. 3. AMENDMENTS TO FAIR CREDIT REPORTING ACT.

    (a) Medical Debt Defined.--Section 603 of the Fair Credit Reporting 
Act (15 U.S.C. 1681a) is amended by adding at the end the following:
    ``(z) Medical Debt.--The term `medical debt' means a debt described 
in section 604(g)(1)(C).''.
    (b) Exclusion for Paid or Settled Medical Debt.--Section 605(a) of 
the Fair Credit Reporting Act (15 U.S.C. 1681c(a)) is amended by adding 
at the end the following:
            ``(7) Any information related to a fully paid or settled 
        medical debt that had been characterized as delinquent, charged 
        off, or in collection which, from the date of payment or 
        settlement, antedates the report by more than 45 days.''.
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