10.29.25

Cantwell Statement on Trump Administration Effort to Override WA Law That Protects Families With Medical Debt From Financial Ruin

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and senior member of the Finance Committee, released the following statement regarding the Trump Administration’s efforts to weaken protections for Americans facing medical debt:

“The Trump Administration cut Medicaid and they don’t have a plan to reduce skyrocketing health insurance premiums. Now they want to undercut state protections that help prevent medical debt from ruining families’ finances. The Administration is making health care impossibly expensive and moving to punish Americans who can’t afford it. This isn’t governing, it’s cruelty,” said Sen. Cantwell.

Yesterday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued an interpretive rule that will weaken protections many states have provided to families worried that medical debt could have an adverse effect on their credit report and threaten their ability to get a home, a car, or a job.

While the new CFPB rule does not invalidate any state statute, it does assert that the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) generally preempts state laws that remove medical debt from credit score reporting and opens the door to litigation challenges in the states.

In 2025, the State of Washington was among the more than a dozen states that enacted a law prohibiting collection agencies from reporting medical debt to credit agencies, thus protecting consumers from suffering potentially long-term financial ruin on top of having to deal with a devastating and costly medical diagnosis.

Moreover, the Trump Administration reversal comes just months after the CFPB wrote to the Washington legislators who introduced bills to address this important issue to “commend work by states … to proactively protect consumers against the harms of medical debt reporting.” In that letter, the CFPB discussed how medical debt is unique compared to other types of consumer debt, including that it can be “rife with unreliable information” and that it is “less predictive of credit risk.” The CFPB went on to say that Washington’s legislation, which ultimately became law, “would cement important protections against medical bill credit reporting into Washington law.”

According to KFF, “Nationwide, about 100 million people have some form of health care debt, with millions burdened by $10,000 or more in unpaid bills.”

According to a survey by Fair Health Prices Washington, six in ten Washingtonians said they could not pay an unexpected $500 medical bill, and 30 percent of residents said they live in a household with medical debt, even with health insurance.