FICO score changes may impact the effect of your medical debt on your credit
Image Source: Flickr CC User Jay Gorman
The purpose of a credit score is to help potential creditors and lenders assess whether you’re a good risk for a loan, credit card, or other debt. Your credit score should reflect your financial behavior. But when it comes to medical bills, your FICO score sometimes puts you in a worse light than you deserve. Fortunately, new credit score models may change some aspects of your financial track record – including medical debt.
New Scores Will Reduce the Impact of Medical Bills
Before the new FICO scoring models were developed, all bills weighed similarly on your credit report. Leaving a credit card bill unpaid could affect you in the same way that an unpaid doctor bill would – but medical debt is often not an accurate assessment of your financial behavior. Even those with health insurance (a greater percentage now thanks to the Affordable Care Act) can still be stuck with unmanageable out-of-pocket costs through no fault of their own. In fact, roughly 20% of US workers (those out of school and pre-retirement) have medical debt they cannot afford to pay.
And some cases, medical bills may linger because the consumer is working with their physician or insurance company to get a billing issue corrected for an expense that insurance should have covered. In other cases, the medical provider might not send their statement to the patient in a timely manner – or the insurer could mishandle the bill. Under the old FICO scoring model, all this would have negatively impacted your credit score.
How FICO 9 Calculations Change the Weight of Medical Bills
The FICO 9 score lessens the impact of medical debts in collection on your credit score. You may not realize this, but when one of your debts goes bad and your creditor turns it over for debt collection, this event triggers a second entry on your credit score. You may end up with two entries for a single debt – one from the creditor and one from the debt collection agency. In some cases, that means the effect on your credit score can be doubled.
But with FICO 9, medical debt collections will carry lesser weight. If medical bills are your only negative items, you may see a credit score increase of 25 points or more from nothing more than this change in the calculation. However, it’s important to know that not every creditor or lender will use this new scoring model. The FICO score is a subscription service, and creditors can subscribe to whichever version of the score they prefer.
Who Will Be Affected by the New Scoring Model?
Veterans, in particular, may be harder hit by medical bills if they rely on the VA for their medical care. If the VA is slow about processing a service payment for medical treatment for a veteran, the veteran may end up with a collections agency pursuing them for debts the VA should have paid. That doesn’t seem fair, but it’s the harsh reality. But with this new scoring model, the effect of the VA’s late payment habits would not affect a veteran’s credit score as much.
Do you have medical bills you can’t pay? If you’re overwhelmed with doctors' bills and can’t dig your way out, Chapter 7 bankruptcy offers the chance to have all your medical bills completely discharged within weeks of filing. This can be life changing. Then, after you file bankruptcy and clear your financial slate, you can get a fresh start by working to improve your credit score.
To find out more about rebuilding credit after bankruptcy, contact Credit Score Keys today. We help North Carolina consumers bounce back after bankruptcy and get the credit they deserve. Call 919-495-2365 today for a free consultation about improving your credit score after bankruptcy.