Is medical debt still on your credit report?

What did the CFPB medical debt rule do, and what happened to it?

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a final rule in January 2025 that would have barred consumer reporting agencies from including medical debt in consumer reports, and barred creditors from considering it. It never applied.

On July 11, 2025, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas vacated the rule in *Cornerstone Credit Union League v. CFPB*, holding that it exceeded the Bureau's authority under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Implementation had already been stayed, so no version of the ban was ever in force. Pages that still describe medical debt as banned from credit reports are describing a rule that was struck down.

What keeps medical debt off a report today?

Two things, and neither is the vacated rule.

The first is voluntary. In announcements beginning in March 2022, the three nationwide credit reporting companies said they would stop including medical collections that had been delinquent for less than one year, would drop medical collections once paid, and — from spring 2023 — would leave out medical collections under $500. These are company policies, not statutory obligations, which means they can be revised by the companies that adopted them.

The second is state law. Roughly fifteen states have enacted their own restrictions on medical debt in credit reports. Whether those laws survive is an open question, covered in the next section.

Do state medical debt laws still apply?

That is unsettled, and anyone telling you otherwise is ahead of the record.

The Eastern District of Texas decision reasoned that the FCRA preempts state laws that dictate the content of a consumer report. On October 28, 2025 the CFPB published an interpretive rule taking the same position across the board, replacing a narrower 2022 interpretation under earlier leadership. An interpretive rule is the agency's reading of the statute, not binding law, and preemption of any specific state statute is decided by a court.

The practical effect for a consumer is that a state protection may or may not be enforceable where you live. What is not in question is the federal dispute right: FCRA Section 611 applies to a medical collection exactly as it applies to any other item.

What can you dispute on a medical collection?

The same fields you would put to any furnisher, because a medical collection is a tradeline like any other. The date of first delinquency, the balance, the identity of the current owner of the debt, the account number, and whether the same debt is being reported twice — by the provider and again by a collection agency.

One field carries extra weight here. If a collection is under the $500 threshold, or has been paid, or has been delinquent for less than a year, it sits outside what the three companies said they would report. A dispute can point to that as a specific, checkable inconsistency rather than a general objection.

What a dispute cannot do is remove an accurate, currently reportable medical collection. Under FCRA Section 611 the bureau investigates what you identify; accurate information can stay.

How does Loosn treat a medical collection?

Loosn AI reads your report, flags medical collections alongside every other negative item, and drafts a dispute letter that names the specific fields at issue and cites the FCRA section that obliges the bureau to investigate them. You review the letter, you decide whether to send it, and you are the sender of record on the envelope.

Loosn does not contact bureaus or creditors for you, and no removal is promised. You can run this same process yourself, directly with the bureaus, free of charge.