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Pennsylvania State Senate
08/16/2024 11:05 AM
Pennsylvania State Senate
https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/Legis/CSM/showMemoPublic.cfm?SPick=20230&chamber=S&cosponId=40369
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Senate of Pennsylvania
Session of 2023 - 2024 Regular Session

MEMORANDUM

Posted: March 30, 2023 04:28 PM
From: Senator Vincent J. Hughes
To: All Senate members
Subject: Protections against predatory medical debt collections
 
In the near future I will be introducing legislation to help reduce the burden of medical debt on Pennsylvanians.

According to a report from Kaiser Health News, hundreds of hospitals nationwide employ aggressive tactics to pursue patients with unpaid medical bills. These actions include selling debts to collection agencies, reporting patients to national credit agencies, denying non-emergency care, and bringing legal action to recover unpaid amounts. The report found that even large, nonprofit university hospitals employ these tactics, even though these systems are required under both state and federal law to provide charity care. The American Economic Liberties Project, a nonprofit and nonpartisan group, has echoed these concerns, calling on policymakers to require nonprofit hospitals to provide a certain amount of uncompensated care. But the issue of medical debt is not limited to the indigent and uninsured: 6 in 10 working-age adults with insurance coverage have incurred medical debt in the past five years, and 10.5% of Pennsylvanians have nearly $1.8 billion in outstanding medical debt.

Drawing on recent legislation from New Mexico, Colorado, and Maryland, my bill will provide a variety of protections to Pennsylvanians seeking necessary medical care:
  • Prior to seeking payment for medically-necessary care, health care providers will be required to screen all patients for eligibility for public and private coverage, including Medicaid.
  • For indigent patients, health care providers will be prohibited from pursuing debts through aggressive collection actions (e.g., filing a lawsuit or selling a debt to a collections agency).
  • For low-income patients, health care providers will be required to offer monthly payment plans that are capped at a fraction of a patient’s household income.
  • For all patients, medical creditors must make a good faith effort to settle a debt prior to pursuing an aggressive collection action.
  • If a collection action is filed in court, medical creditors must engage in a judicial settlement conference before proceeding to trial.
  • All communications must inform patients of their rights regarding medical debt and be accessible to patients with disabilities, including the visually impaired.
Our Commonwealth is home to arguably the best health care in the nation. Please join me in ensuring our health care institutions continue to be accessible to all Pennsylvanians.


Introduced as SB870