The Senate Health and Provider Services Committee approved the bill unanimously after introducing the limit and some others. But in the full Senate, two lawmakers from that committee said the bill went too far and didn’t have "any limits."
(Abigail Ruhman/IPB News)
Hoosiers have an estimated $2.2 billion of medical debt in collections — with even more on payment plans and credit cards. A proposal to introduce consumer protections against medical debt failed to advance in the Senate.
Among other things, Senate Bill 317 would have placed limits on wage garnishment and liens on a primary residence as a result of medical debt — but only for households that make under 250 percent of the federal poverty line.
The Senate Health and Provider Services Committee approved the bill unanimously after introducing the limit and some others. But in the full Senate, two lawmakers from that committee said the bill went too far and didn’t have "any limits."
Despite voting in favor of the bill in committee, both Sen. Liz Brown (R-Fort Wayne) and Sen. Tyler Johnson (R-Leo) spoke in opposition before the final vote in the Senate.
“I've been following this for quite some time — the medical debt reform space,” Johnson said. “Many of the advocates, proponents for these type of reforms are pushing towards single payer health care.”
Johnson said he believed in preventing people from losing their homes, but said this legislation went too far with the wage garnishment language.
Brown claimed there were no limits to the wage garnishment language, despite the limit being approved by the health committee and stated before she spoke in the Senate. She also claimed the bill creates a system where hospitals have to become like a bank, but “charge a very low interest rate and work diligently forever to collect that debt.”
The chair of the Senate health committee, Sen. Ed Charbonneau (R-Valparaiso), defended the bill. He said it was reviewed by the banker’s association, the hospital association, insurance companies, collection agencies and credit unions.
“When we start having discussions like this, my heart sinks a little bit,” Charbonneau said. “The public isn't all like us. Different circumstances, different finances. That we do different things to hopefully provide some relief for people that need that relief.”
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The bill’s author, Sen. Fady Qaddoura (D-Indianapolis) said the bill does have limits that were created collaboratively by the health committee.
“We do have a crisis that is impacting people,” Qaddoura said. “If the committee was interested, for example, in narrowing the scope to only cancer patients, I would have been open to that. I would have amended the bill with the chairman's approval to limit it to cancer patients. If the committee, for example, wanted to say, ‘Don't use FPL, use less than $50,000, $100,000,’ I'm open to it.”
Qaddoura said lawmakers can change their minds during the legislative process, but those conversations didn’t happen during the process.
He said people are losing their life savings to medical debt, and he wants to do something about it.
“People did everything right in their lives,” Qaddoura said. “It's not their fault or their sin that they became cancer patients or that their insurance doesn't cover things.”
The bill was defeated on the Senate floor, with 23 senators voting in favor and 26 voting in opposition. The language could reappear in other measures during the second half of the legislative session.
Abigail is our health reporter. Contact them at aruhman@wboi.org.
