Medical debt legislation foolish

Regarding the article “Ill. Senate passes legislation that would strip medical debt from credit reports” (April 13): What is the Illinois Senate thinking? Sure, much medical debt is not incurred willingly, but what does that have to do with anything? Credit reports are not about personal blame or merit; they are financial information. The fact that a person did not choose to get injured or sick has nothing to do with the fact that having a major debt means the individual is less able to pay off other debts.

This legislation means that potential creditors would be expected to extend credit (car loans, mortgages, credit cards, etc.) on the assumption that the applicant can pay when in fact that may not be true.

State Sen. Steve Stadelman seems to be under the impression that debt that wasn’t incurred willfully is irrelevant to ability to pay. “No one should have to go into medical debt just to get the quality health care they need,” he said. As an ideal moral position, that’s fine, but so what? The bill is about circumstances in which the person did in fact go into medical debt; “should” is not the issue. The same logic would indicate that potential lenders could also be lied to about whether the applicant still has a job (they shouldn’t have been laid off ) or how much rent they pay (they didn’t ask the landlord to increase the rent).

And by the way, doesn’t “medical debt” include debt incurred for elective cosmetic surgery and other vanity procedures? That just adds to the silliness of this legislation. It’s silly enough if you think only of the costs of truly necessary treatment.

And senators passed this bill 58-0. No one said, “Wait, do we really want to authorize credit applicants to deceive the lenders?” Brilliant.

These are the people we are trusting to run a responsible state budget.

— Steven Gruenwald, Schaumburg