Clarification on Health Insurance and Medical Bills

Unless you are a minor or one of your parents signed the medical provider's treatment agreement as a responsible party, your parents should not be legally liable for your medical debts.

The fact that you have defaulted on your medical bills should have no negative impact on your parents' credit reports (again, unless they personally guaranteed it). Simply being listed as a beneficiary on someone's health insurance does not make the primary beneficiary of the policy liable for your non-covered medical expenses. However, many medical providers will attempt to collect delinquent accounts from the primary insurance holder if the patient herself does not pay the bill. The fact that one of your doctors, or the doctor's collection agency, may try to convince your parents to pay your bills, or even try to convince them that they are liable for the debt, does not mean that they are legally responsible to pay the debt. If your parents are being contacted by collectors asking them to make payment on your medical debts, they need to tell these collectors that they are not liable for the debts, and that the collectors must stop contacting them. From past experience, collectors should stop trying to collect from your parents if your parents tell the creditors that they know that they are not legally liable for the debt.

In all likelihood, your creditors are not reporting your accounts on your parents' credit profiles. However, if you have reason to believe that the creditors are reporting your delinquent medical bills on your parents' credit reports, your parents may need to take action to have these items removed. First, your parents should pull copies of their credit reports from each of the three major credit bureaus- Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. If they find that your accounts are appearing on their credit histories, your parents should consider disputing the listings with the credit reporting agencies. The Federal Trade Commission offers a guide to disputing inaccurate listings, available at Ftc.gov

In addition, you may want to contact your creditors, in writing, to notify them that your parents are not liable for these debts, and that these items must be removed from their credit reports. Once your parents notify the credit bureaus that they are not legally responsible for these debts, the bureaus should remove any inaccurate listings from their credit reports.

As mentioned previously, your parents are not liable for these debts, so these debts should have no effect on their credit ratings. However, if these debts are appearing on their reports, your parents will need to dispute the listings in order to correct the inaccurate information. However, these debts are likely having a negative impact on your credit profile; for ideas about how to resolve your outstanding medical debts, such as credit counseling and debt resolution programs, you should visit the Bills.com Debt Help page.

To learn more about credit, credit reporting, and credit scoring, I encourage you to visit the Bills.com Credit Information page.

I wish you the best of luck in resolving your medical debts, and hope that the information I have provided helps you Find. Learn. Save.

Best,

Bill

Bills.com