I’m Noam Levey, senior correspondent at KFF Health News, and I’ve reported on medical debt across America. For this story, I collaborated with reporters at CT Mirror.
By Noam N. Levey
How often do hospitals, physicians, and other providers sue patients over unpaid bills?
That’s a question we’ve asked a lot over the last several years at KFF Health News. Since 2022, we’ve been working with newsrooms around the country, such as the Connecticut Mirror, to explore the scale and impact of America’s medical debt crisis. It’s part of a project we call “Diagnosis: Debt.”
We know that this type of debt burdens many people — about 100 million adults, according to a nationwide survey we did. But in most states, it’s almost impossible to gauge how many patients are getting taken to court over health care debt.
Connecticut’s court data is different.
It offered an opportunity to explore just how many people are being sued over medical and dental bills, who is suing patients, and for how much. Over the past year, I’ve collaborated with CT Mirror reporters Katy Golvala and Jenna Carlesso to learn more about the people facing legal actions.
What we found was surprising … and sad. This week, we shared the first of our articles, which explores how hospitals have been supplanted by physician groups and other medical and dental providers as the most aggressive bill collectors.
That’s a major reversal from five years earlier, when hospital system lawsuits made up three-quarters of health-related collection cases in the state’s courts.
The shift is moving medical debt collections into a less regulated realm. Most hospitals, because they are tax-exempt nonprofits, must make financial aid available to low-income patients and follow federal regulations that limit aggressive collection activities. Other medical providers, such as private medical groups, are generally exempt from these rules.
Lawsuits can lead to garnished wages, liens on homes, and hundreds of dollars of added debt from interest and court fees. They also pile additional financial strains on struggling families, prevent patients from getting needed care, and sap trust in medical providers.
“It’s really messed up,” said Allie Cass-Wilson, a nurse in Bristol, Connecticut, who was sued over a $1,972 debt by an OB-GYN practice where she’d been a patient years earlier. She did not contest the lawsuit, court records show. Still, she asked: “How can they do that to people?”
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