Hey there.

A couple of months ago, I started hearing from people on Twitter, on email about a story

that was starting to hit the news.

Credit reporting bureaus were going to take a lot of medical bills off of people's credit

reports.

I have to tell you, my first impression was maybe a little depressed.

I mean, don't get me wrong, this seemed like it would be a good thing for a lot of people,

but it also was kind of shining a spotlight on how bad things are.

That day's news stories cited numbers from the consumer financial protection bureau

that there's 88 billion dollars in medical debt, sitting on 43 million credit reports.

And number one, this wasn't going to make all 88 billion dollars disappear from those

credit reports, not even close.

And number two, well, even if all 88 billion dollars did disappear from those credit reports,

it wouldn't make the debt go away, collectors wouldn't stop hassling people for it.

And finally, this change wouldn't address the big problem.

How 43 million of us ended up with medical debts that we weren't in a position to pay,

which could be almost any of us.

This is not 43 million of us being too impatient to save up for a new plate station.

This is 43 million of us getting sick, and getting socked with bills that are usually

inflated, sometimes just in error, and that our insurance doesn't protect us from.

You know what?

I was right about all that.

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