National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022

Floor Speech

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Ms. TLAIB. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of amendment No. 11 which would provide critical needed consumer protection to our servicemembers who hold medical debt.

No one chooses to get sick, yet medical debt is the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in our country, and the pandemic has only made paid our medical debt crisis worse, especially for our veterans.

According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, servicemembers and veterans are nearly twice as likely to submit debt collection complaints as the general public. And medical debt concerns comprise nearly 13 percent of servicemember debt collection complaints.

So this amendment is important because medical bills and reimbursements are often vague and confusing. Servicemembers often assert that the calculation of the underlying debt is inaccurate and unfair. Other times, bills go missing during deployment or are delivered to the wrong recipient.

So this amendment would strengthen servicemembers' consumer protections regarding medical debt by preventing the collection of medical debt for 2 years from the date of medical billing, and prohibiting credit agencies from reporting all medical debt collections for a year.

My amendment also requires medical debt collectors to provide servicemembers with their consumer rights upon contact.

Together, these protections would provide servicemembers much-needed clarity to figure out what they actually owe and what the impact will have on their credit.

So, Madam Speaker, debt collection particularly affects our young servicemembers and veterans who have little credit history upon enlisting.

Among servicemembers with 3 or fewer years of service, the CFPB has found 5 percent had medical debts in collection just prior to separation from service, and that number doubles to more than 10 percent within a year of their separation from service. As a result, those same individuals with 3 years or less of service, on average, exit the armed services with subprime credit scores.

So with that I really finally ask my colleagues to please help us ban medical debt also for medically necessary procedures from ever even appearing on servicemembers' credit reports.

This amendment would not prevent States from implementing stronger protections for our servicemembers. It would not preempt existing consumer protections for our servicemembers already on the books.

Again, I remind my colleagues that, again, this is really critical for our servicemembers.
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Ms. TLAIB. Madam Speaker, I remind my colleagues that all of these protections have already passed the House this Congress but have yet to receive action in the Senate.

I want to remind my colleagues also the way the amendment is drafted right now currently, a medically necessary procedure is defined as, one, healthcare services or supplies needed to diagnose or treat an illness, injury, condition, disease, or symptom that meet accepted standards of medicine; two, healthcare to prevent illness and detect illnesses at an early stage when treatment is likely to work best, again, for services like Pap tests, flu shots, and screening mammograms

I want to remind my colleagues, this is a huge barrier. The credit reports are huge barriers for housing and employment for our veterans. We continue to support increased housing for our veterans, increased mental health services for our veterans and all these other issues but, much of that is due to the fact that we have credit reports with medically necessary debt, medical procedures on there, and really no pathway to protect our consumers, our veterans, in this case.

I really remind my colleagues again: we cannot continue to support housing and employment services for our veterans, and the credit report, the credit score, all of that, is holding them hostage unable to continue to create a good life in our country especially after sacrificing so much for our Nation.

So I really ask my colleagues this is the right thing to do. Again, this is basically folks who are getting sick that need healthcare, and we are not saying that they won't be able to collect, the healthcare agencies, they are able to collect. This is just to prevent it from becoming a barrier for many of our veterans who seek employment which does look at--many employers still now currently look at credit reports, and they also look at credit reports for housing. Again, we can't continue to try to fund these kinds of supports when this is a huge barrier for our veterans.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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