Congress votes to let lenders use medical debt against you
S.J.Res. 36 — A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection relating to "Prohibition on Creditors and Consumer Reporting Agencies Concerning Medical Information (Regulation V)". · Filed by Mike Rounds (R-SD) · 5 cosponsors · Introduced Mar 11, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This resolution disapproves a CFPB rule that prohibited creditors and credit-reporting agencies from using medical debt information in lending and credit decisions. If passed, the rule would be nullified, allowing lenders and credit bureaus to resume considering medical debt when evaluating creditworthiness.
Why we flagged it
The bill's operative mechanism is a Congressional Review Act disapproval that nullifies a CFPB consumer-protection rule. The rule itself was a prohibition on creditors' use of medical debt; disapproving it removes that prohibition and restores creditors' ability to factor medical debt into lending decisions.
What the text implies
- Medical debt will now be treated identically to other consumer debt in credit scoring, despite its involuntary nature and weak correlation with repayment ability. This may disproportionately harm patients with chronic illnesses, cancer survivors, and others facing high medical costs.
- Credit bureaus will likely begin collecting and selling medical debt information to lenders, creating a new revenue stream for the credit-reporting industry and expanding the scope of data monetization.
- Borrowers with medical debt may face higher interest rates, denial of credit, or exclusion from prime lending products, even if their medical debt resulted from emergency care or catastrophic illness unrelated to financial behavior.
- The rule's disapproval signals Congressional intent to defer to creditor and credit-bureau interests over consumer protection, potentially emboldening industry lobbying on other CFPB rules.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
Ordinary borrowers lose a consumer protection that shielded them from having medical debt (often involuntary and unrelated to creditworthiness) used against them in lending decisions. Medical debt is frequently the result of catastrophic illness or injury, not financial mismanagement, yet its inclusion in credit scoring can trap vulnerable people in cycles of credit denial and higher rates.
Who stands to gain
- credit card issuers
- mortgage lenders
- auto lenders
- credit-reporting agencies (Equifax, Experian, TransUnion)
- debt collectors
- financial services sector broadly
Named in the bill
Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (CFPB), U.S. Senate, Equifax, Experian, TransUnion, credit card issuers, mortgage lenders, auto lenders
Where it stands
5 cosponsors: 5 Republicans.
- Mar 11, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Mar 11, 2025 — Referred to Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
3 lobbying clients named this bill on 6 disclosure filings across 3 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $55,226,000 in lobbying spend. A filing names 134 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 61% of bills with at least one filing.
Mike Rounds, the sponsor, reported $1,681,790 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- Chamber of Commerce of the U.S.A. — $54,660,000 on 3 filings
- Aca International — $300,000 on 2 filings
- American Financial Services Association — $266,000 on 1 filing
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 20, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (1,398 characters) on Jun 3, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
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