The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has gotten a lot of miles out of its attacks on “junk” fees in the financial services industry. The Biden administration has also used the term in a number of situations and instances to show what it is doing to protect consumers from being taken advantage of by corporations. Rohit Chopra, the director of the CFPB, is road-testing a new phrase in an op-ed column that was published on CNN.com — junk data — which is what he calls medical debt errors that are “polluting” the credit reporting system.
Chopra uses the piece to lay out the CFPB’s arguments and reasons why it is proposing eliminating medical debt from consumers’ credit reports. Debt collectors and other bad actors are weaponizing the credit reporting system to coerce individuals into paying debts they do not owe, according to Chopra. “They’re able to do this because they have people over a barrel — forced to choose between a lengthy fight to fix an inaccuracy or just paying a bill so they can move on with their lives.”
The federal government is pressing its narrative hard in an attempt to convince consumers that removing medical debts from their credit reports is a good thing. Not that they really need to press that hard to convince anyone that removing negative items from their credit reports will give them more access to credit.
The credit reporting agencies, according to Chopra “have fallen asleep at the wheel” in the absence of meaningful competition.
“Junk data no longer has a home on credit reports,” Chopra writes. “When you get sick, the focus should be on getting better — not on fighting debt collectors trying to extort you into paying bills you may not even owe. It’s time to put an end to medical debt coercion and protect Americans’ financial health.”
