AJC Article on Medical Debt

Medical debt has always been one of the toughest areas of debt collection. Since medical care is essential, consumers are not able to negotiate or make meaningful market-based choices. Then adding on what insurance should pay renders the whole billing almost incomprehensible to most consumers.

To illustrate, the Atlanta Journal Constitution ran this story recently:

Clara Gladue lay in a coma while thousands of dollars of her family’s credit card bills piled up.

Roughly four months later, when she woke up from the coma, the Georgia nurse practitioner was greeted with the news that the debt had grown to more than $12,000 and that her husband, a professor in Augusta, had been sued by an Atlanta-based debt collection law firm.

And the problem:

This spring, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation found that small-claims courts in Georgia have been turned into debt collection mills. Collectors file hundreds of suits against consumers and devote little time to checking whether there was a basis for the claims or that they are suing the right person for the right amount.

The NCLC has proposed what seems to be a reasonable solution:

The Boston-based National Consumer Law Center wants the regulator to hold collectors responsible by requiring an adequate review of admissible evidence before a lawsuit is filed.