Protecting Military from Medical Debt: Sen. Brown Calls for Action

Letter calls on Department of Defense to protect members of the military

U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio is calling on the Department of Defense to take action to prevent members of the military from being plagued by medical debt.

Brown, who chairs the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, issued a letter to the Defense Department asking for reporting on medical debt impacting active duty servicemembers and their families.

The letter, also signed by Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Raphael Warnock of Georgia, expresses concerns over lax data collection on medical debt by the DoD.

“We are concerned by the revelation that TRICARE still ‘does not currently collect data on medical debt’ and that existing data collection efforts are fragmented across different DoD systems and are ‘not complete enough to accurately report the extent or amount of medical debt among service members and their families.’ We urge you to improve how DoD collects data on service members’ medical debt and strengthen DoD’s coordination with medical providers and debt collectors to better protect service members and their families from financial harm,” the senators wrote.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has called for reform of medical debt reporting, noting its adverse impact on credit reports and therefore, access to credit.

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