Good NY State Budget News

By Phil Prehn, Systems Change Advocate

While we have spent a lot of time trying to stop the Governor from making catastrophic changes to the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance program, we have seemingly convinced the Governor on a different policy issue we have been working on.

For the past couple of years, we have gotten the state to strengthen its regulations regarding medical debt and aggressive collections. 

Two years ago, the Governor banned hospitals and other medical providers from garnishing your wages or putting a lien on your home to pay medical debt Last year, we convinced the state to outlaw putting medical debt on household’s credit reports.

We just got word that in this year’s budget, the state had added more protections for families facing medical debt—requiring hospitals to inform patients of all hospital financial assistance (HFA) programs at discharge, as well as:

• Patients may apply for HFA any time during the collection process
• No sale of medical debt
• No denial of care b/c of unpaid medical bills
• No lawsuits against patients with incomes under 400% of the federal poverty level (In Syracuse, that would mean all families with income under $112, 000.)