Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders released a plan Saturday to eliminate $81 billion in past-due medical debt, going a step beyond his primary rivals who have called for a government-run health insurance program.
“In America today, it is unacceptable that one out of every six Americans have past-due medical bills on their credit report, totaling $81 billion,” Sen. Sanders, I-Vt., said in a statement, adding: “It is immoral and unconscionable that families across the country are being evicted, having their heat disconnected, or having their already-inadequate wages garnished because of crippling medical debt while the health care industry made more than $100 billion in profits last year.”
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Under his plan, Sanders said, the federal government would step in for the individual to negotiate and pay off past-due medical bills in collections reported to credit agencies.
Sanders also vowed to create a public credit registry to replace the three for-profit credit reporting agencies in order to, as he put it: “remove the profit motive from assessing the creditworthiness of American consumers.” He said the registry would use “public, transparent algorithm to determine creditworthiness that eliminates racial biases in credit scores.”
The self-described democratic socialist added that he would exclude medical debt from credit reports and end credit checking for rental housing, employment, insurance and other non-lending practices. – READ MORE