Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's Tuesday, June 15th. I'm Nyla Boudou.

Here's what we're watching today. The overlooked role of Latinos in the LGBTQ Civil Rights Movement.

Plus, the Homeownership Gap widens. But first, today's one big thing, predatory billing by U.S. hospitals.

A new Axios special report in partnership with Johns Hopkins University shed some light on the

predatory practices American hospitals are using to collect on patients debt. Medical debt makes up

58 percent of all debt collections in the U.S. and has caused hundreds of thousands of Americans

to file for bankruptcy. Caitlin Owens covers health care for Axios and is part of the special

coverage. Good morning, Caitlin. Good morning. Caitlin, the idea of hospitals going a court to

sue patients for unpaid debt was always considered something of an anomaly. But this reporting points out

it's much more frequent than we thought. So what this is? It's a contained study. It looks at the

100 largest hospitals in the U.S. and largest by revenue, meaning they bring in the most money.

So what it found was that 26 of these 100 hospitals take patients to court to recover medical bills.

And the thing that is remarkable about this study is by definition hospitals that are bringing in

a ton of money. It's the top 100 by revenue. It raises the question of if you're suing a patient for

$1,700. What is the end goal here? What kind of protections are in place for patients to

avoid having to go to court and not only have to pay but have this on their financial records?

So hospitals do offer financial assistance. Millions and millions of Americans have a deductible

that's $1,000, $2,000. If you have a 20% copay on top of your deductible, I mean, you can easily go

to the hospital once for an ER visit and owe multiple thousands of dollars. If you can't pay that and

you don't have some kind of financial assistance, there's just really nothing to stop a hospital

from taking you to court to recover that debt. And this problem stems from the massive markups

that hospitals are putting on medical services and procedures. You're reporting shows sometimes

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