Unpaid medical debt will no longer appear in New York residents’ credit reports under a bill signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul on Wednesday.

The law prohibits credit agencies from collecting information about or reporting medical debt. The law also bans hospitals and health care providers in the state from reporting such debt to the agencies.

New York is the second state after Colorado to enact such a law. A similar nationwide measure is being considered by the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

“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.

  • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    So just like cannabis prohibition, minimum wage that never increases, and abortion bans, medical debt wrecking your credit is now a Red State Problem that will never be fixed at the national level.

    • mibo80@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      They don’t want that down there. Those folks who vote red want it that way. They like the struggle to survive… apparently.

      • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        And there’s the attitude I’m talking about.

        These policies are designed to get people who are likely to vote for Democrats to leave red states, making them even harder to flip. This is how you get a permanent Republican majority in the Senate: by pretending that the victims of Republican policy deserve it because opposing it at the national level involves work.

        • chitak166@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          States can ignore what the senate tells them to do.

          You might not know this, but marijuana is still a schedule 1 controlled substance.

    • TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      I mean… good. I say this as someone living in Texas. Just let it play out, people in red states will suffer, and it’ll probably be their kids that figure shit out.

      • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        The point of these policies is to get Democrats to leave and further cement Republican majorities in red states. If Republicans secure a permanent Senate majority like they’re trying to do here, do you suspect they’ll be content with keeping their policies at the state level?

        Oh well, at least you’ll get to see more stories about women denied abortions so you can laugh at them and say they deserved it, just like Republicans do.