Wrong! When services have been provided to you by a provider or facility, they are entitled to be paid. They are allowed to do whatever is legal under bill collecting statutes to collect that debt, including turning your files over to a collection agency. If you fall behind in paying your medical bills, that will be reported to credit agencies and your payment struggles will be recorded on your credit report.
Your medical history and payment problems may also get reported to the Medical Information Bureau which services life insurance companies, among others, and ties together health and credit.
Further, FICO, the organization that develops credit scores for use by lenders, began developing "medication adherence scores" in 2011. Many experts believe that eventually those scores will be put together with credit scores to draw conclusions about individual patients which will, in turn, affect their ability to access medical care or other types of health insurance (life, disability, others.)
