"Medical debt is such a vicious cycle. It truly hits low-income earners, but it forces them to stay low-income earners because they can't never get out from under it," Hochul, a Democrat, said at the bill-signing ceremony in New York City.
The new law won't necessarily stop all medical debt from affecting New Yorkers' credit scores. It won't apply to debt that is charged to a credit card, unless the card was issued specifically for health services, and it doesn't apply to out-of-state health care providers.
More than 740,000 New Yorkers had unpaid medical debt owed to collection agencies on their credit reports as of February 2022, according to a study by the Urban Institute, a nonprofit research organization. The study also found that in most regions in the state, communities of color had higher rates of medical debt than predominately white communities.
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