The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) released a report highlighting the complicated and burdensome nature of the medical billing system in the U.S., according to a CFPB press release. The report reveals that the U.S. healthcare system is supported by a billing, payments, collections, and credit reporting infrastructure where mistakes are common, and where patients often have difficulty getting these errors corrected or resolved. “When it comes to medical bills, Americans are often caught in a doom loop between their medical provider and insurance company,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra. “Our credit reporting system is too often used as a tool to coerce and extort patients into paying medical bills they may not even owe.” This recent report details how medical bills are often incurred through unexpected and emergency events, are subject to opaque pricing, and involve complicated insurance or charity care coverage and pricing rules.
In emergency situations, patients might not even sign a billing agreement until after receiving treatment. In other instances, patients, including those with chronic illnesses or who are injured or ill, may desperately feel that the need for medical care forces them into accepting any costs for treatment. The report describes challenges and sources of confusion when a person’s medical bills go into collection or are placed on a credit report. Bills may be sent to collectors by doctors, hospitals, parent companies, or groups representing a service provider, so there may be multiple charges for the same visit. The total billed amount can easily snowball into something completely unrecognizable.
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