iPF on Forbes: You're Responsible for Your Medical Debt

In a post over on our Forbes platform, Mike Bevel is unlikely to make any friends as he suggests that maybe clearing medical debt from credit reports isn’t the best idea:

But let’s take a moment and talk about credit scores and credit reporting. It’s the mechanism — flawed as it might be — that we currently use to gauge a consumer’s credit-worthiness. There’s a long history of American Exceptionalism: owning a home isn’t so much something one earns as much as it’s somehow wrapped into those “inalienable rights” the Founding Fathers went on about. Other inalienable rights: a college education, regardless the ridiculousness of the degree; ranch dressing, regardless of the health toll it would take; giant sodas, New York City be damned; freedom of expression sans the requisite freedom to let other people express.

And I mention all of this because I think it might actually not be a smart move to excise medical debt from credit reports any earlier than any other kind of debt would make its way off of a credit report. The report is, as I said a paragraph ago, gauging a consumer’s credit-worthiness; paying off a hefty medical debt on top of whatever potpourri of other debt you’ve left simmering may not actually leave you in the most solid position, financially, to take on additional credit.

You can read the whole thing here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insidepatientfinance/2013/04/30/medical-debt-actually-should-affect-credit-scores/