Ohio Newspaper Allegedly Finds 'Patient Zero' Behind Medical Debt Collection Legislation

If an Ohio newspaper is to be believed, the Medical Debt Responsibility Act before Congress seeking to limit debt collection for medical bills is because of one woman who could not pay a $6,000 bill for a sleep study.

The Columbus Dispatch has been running an investigative series on alleged abuses around debt collection, which according to our sister website, insideARM.com, is a reworking of a series the paper ran in May. Yesterday the newspaper wrote about medical debt collection.

The Dispatch claimed to have found the woman whose heartfelt letter to U.S. Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy prompted the Congresswoman to sponsor the Medical Debt Responsibility Act that would strip medical debt from credit reports.

Julia Mueller “was working graveyard shifts and plowing her way through a chemical-engineering degree when doctors ordered a sleep study to combat her chronic fatigue,” the Dispatch wrote. “Her health-insurance company reneged on a promise to pay for the study, causing the $6,200 bill to fall delinquent and onto her credit report. She managed to pay it off with help from others, but the debt still haunts her financial history today.”

The reporters did not  interview the doctors who determined the woman needed a sleep study for chronic fatigue or why, even though she was working at night and going to Ohio State University during the day. Nor did they interview anyone at the health insurance company that rejected her claim or at the collection agency that reported her debt to the credit bureau.

Some two dozen paragraphs later, the Dispatch article returned to the woman’s story. “Her debt from the sleep study was paid off mainly because of the compassion of OSU’s student insurance program, which took care of the bulk of Mueller’s bill after hearing her story,” according to the article. “Her doctor’s billing office also forgave a smaller piece of the debt.”