The House of Representatives could vote as early as today on a package of bills aimed at reforming the credit reporting process, including prohibiting the reporting of healthcare debts for procedures deemed to be medically necessary, and reducing the amount of time that late payments stay on an individual’s credit report.
While it appears unlikely that the Republican-controlled Senate would even consider the bills, their passage would be a symbolic win for Democrats and possibly set the stage for re-introduction — and passage — next year if they win control of the Senate in the November elections.
There are six bills in total being considered by the House:
- H.R. 3621 – Student Borrower Credit Improvement Act
- H.R. 3614 – Restricting Credit Checks for Employment Decisions Act
- H.R. 3618 – Free Credit Scores for Consumers Act of 2019
- H.R. 3622 – Restoring Unfairly Impaired Credit and Protecting Consumers Act
- H.R. 3629 – Clarity in Credit Score Formation Act of 2019
- H.R. 3642 – Improving Credit Reporting for All Consumers Act
H.R. 3622 would, among other provisions, amend the Fair Credit Reporting Act to prohibit the reporting of healthcare debts from medically necessary procedures, without defining how, who, or what constitutes a medically necessary procedure, and requires furnishers to wait 365 days before reporting medical debts to a credit bureau.
H.R. 3621 is exactly one sentence long, but would have a much larger impact on the collection and student lending industries. The bill would remove adverse information for certain defaulted or delinquent private education loans from the credit reports of individuals “who demonstrate a history of loan repayment, and for other purposes,” without going into details about the specifics of what constitutes a history of loan repayment or for what other purposes.
