Last reviewed: 13 September 2026
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Medical debt and your credit report: the actual rules right now
"Medical debt doesn't hurt your credit anymore" is the popular version. The real picture is three layers deep: a set of voluntary industry policies that do still apply, a stronger federal rule that was finalized and then thrown out by a court within six months, and a live legal fight over whether state laws going further than the industry policy can survive at all. None of that is credit-repair-company territory — it's just worth knowing precisely, since the popular version overstates how much protection actually exists today.
What actually changed in 2022 and 2023 — and who changed it
Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion jointly announced a set of voluntary policy changes on 18 March 2022, phased in over the following year. None of this is a law or a CFPB rule — it's the three bureaus' own reporting policy, which matters because a policy the bureaus adopted on their own, they can also narrow or reverse on their own, unlike a statute.
- Effective 1 July 2022: medical collection debt that has since been paid in full is removed from a credit report entirely, regardless of the amount. Unpaid medical collection debt also got more breathing room before it can appear at all — the reporting delay after a medical bill goes to collections increased from six months to a full year, giving a consumer time to sort out insurance or a payment plan before it shows up on a credit file.
- Effective 11 April 2023: the three bureaus stopped including medical collection debt below $500 (the original reported balance) on a credit report at all, paid or not.
Together, the three bureaus estimated these changes removed roughly 70% of medical collection tradelines that had previously appeared on U.S. credit reports. That's a real, large effect — but it's also worth being precise about what it doesn't cover: an unpaid medical collection of $500 or more, once a full year has passed, can still appear on a report today under this same policy.
The federal rule that would have gone further — and didn't survive six months
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed, on 11 June 2024, going well past the bureaus' voluntary policy: a rule barring medical debt and medical collection information from consumer reports entirely, and separately barring most lenders from considering medical information in a lending decision at all. The CFPB finalized that rule on 7 January 2025, amending Regulation V, with an effective date of 17 March 2025.
It did not last long. A trade-group challenge, Cornerstone Credit Union League v. CFPB, No. 4:25-cv-00016 (E.D. Tex.), moved through the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, and on 11 July 2025 — with the CFPB itself, under new leadership, joining the plaintiffs in asking for this outcome — the court vacated the rule. Its stated reasoning: the rule exceeded the CFPB's statutory authority, because the Fair Credit Reporting Act itself does not give the agency authority to bar this specific category of otherwise-accurate information from a credit report.
The live fight over whether state laws survive
At least two states had already gone further than the bureaus' voluntary policy with their own statutes: Colorado's HB 23-1126, signed 18 July 2023 and in effect since that August, bars medical debt information from a credit report entirely — though the ban itself is written to sunset on 1 July 2028 unless the legislature renews it. New York's Fair Medical Debt Reporting Act does something similar, effective 13 December 2023. Both are real, currently-enacted state laws — not proposals.
Two developments since the Cornerstone ruling have put both directly in question:
- In late October 2025, the CFPB issued a new interpretive rule stating outright that the FCRA preempts state laws barring medical debt from credit reports — reversing a 2022 CFPB interpretive rule that had said the opposite.
- On 5 November 2025, ACA International (a debt-collection industry trade group) and Creditors Bureau USA, one of its members, sued Colorado's Uniform Consumer Credit Code Administrator directly, in ACA International v. Fulford, No. 1:25-cv-03530 (D. Colo.), seeking to have HB 23-1126 struck down as preempted by the FCRA and, separately, as an unconstitutional restriction on commercial speech under the First Amendment.
As of this writing, Colorado's and New York's laws remain on the books, and neither has been struck down by a final court judgment — but the Colorado case is genuinely live, not stalled: a scheduling order issued in February 2026, and the state's motion to dismiss was filed 13 March 2026 with no ruling yet. The legal ground under both state laws is less stable than it was a year ago, and industry groups have signaled they intend to keep testing this argument state by state. If you live in Colorado or New York and are relying on either state's law specifically, it's worth checking the current status directly rather than assuming it holds indefinitely.
What this means for you today
Stack these layers in the order they actually apply, nationwide, right now:
- The bureaus' own 2022-2023 policy — paid medical debt removed, a one-year delay, a $500 floor — is still the operative baseline everywhere in the country, regardless of what happens to any state law or federal rule. It was never repealed; it just was never a law to begin with.
- The stronger CFPB rule that would have removed all medical debt from reports, and barred its use in underwriting, is not in effect. It was vacated in full.
- A state-specific ban (Colorado, New York, and any other state that has since enacted one) may currently apply on paper, but its durability is an open legal question industry groups are actively litigating.
None of this changes your separate, ordinary right to dispute a specific medical collection entry that's actually inaccurate, unverifiable, or past its normal reporting window — see what credit repair actually is for that mechanism, which applies to a medical debt exactly the same way it applies to any other account.