The New Credit Card Scam Infiltrating Your Doctor’s Office

“There should be no door in the doctors’ office that opens to a bank.”

By Brock Hrehor, More Perfect Union

There’s a predatory lending scheme that’s been gaining traction, and it could be lurking in your doctor’s office.

Companies like Synchrony’s CareCredit offer medical credit cards to financially vulnerable patients who can’t afford to pay for their medical expenses out-of-pocket. But what’s typically presented as a financial life vest can end up leaving patients saddled with debt — and some critics argue that’s largely by design.

As the name suggests, patients sign up for medical credit cards through their health care providers. Providers sign on with a financial institution, like Synchrony’s CareCredit, to set up a payment platform. When patients are unable to afford their treatment costs, providers can sign them up for a credit card to cover the payment.

But this has led to some providers engaging in deceptive and predatory lending practices. According to David Zhao, an attorney at Public Counsel, some patients have been signed up in the exam chair or while under anesthesia — and some were signed up without even filling out a form themselves.

“I wasn’t taken to a desk. I wasn’t taken out of there. It was all done in the dental chair. You know, with—she had the clipboard waiting,” Della Ann Maciel, who was signed up for a medical credit card, told More Perfect Union.

Once these patients are signed up, they can be forced to grapple with eye-watering interest payments, sometimes even if they’re paying according to the company’s minimum payment policy. That’s because these credit card companies often utilize deferred interest plans.

“There’s a promotional period, typically 6 to 18 months, where there’s zero interest, and then at the end of that period, if a patient hasn’t paid that entire amount off, then that deferred interest actually reactivates,” April Kuenhoff, attorney at the National Consumer Law Center told More Perfect Union. “And so then they would have to pay off any remaining balance plus interest that would’ve accrued from the very start, from the day one of paying off that card.”

That’s what happened to David. “The minimum payments that they were suggesting for me actually would not result in me avoiding that huge APR at the end of the year,” he told us. “So [they were] setting me up for failure here.”

Patients who sign up for a CareCredit card online today would see a rate of 33 percent.

As a result, patients are often saddled with debt, and are sometimes sued by CareCredit. In the case of Victoria Mangram, a lawsuit occurred without any treatment taking place. After rejecting a procedure because it was too costly, Victoria’s providers signed her up for CareCredit. Roughly a year later, she was told that Synchrony Bank had already paid her dentist and that she owed them for the costs.

“Synchrony Bank gave their money straight to [the dentist]. I said, ‘that’s between you two, not me.’ But my credit is ruined,” Mangram told More Perfect Union.

For a deeper dive into how these deceptive practices work, how patients have been affected, and some of the organizations that are fighting back, watch the full report below.

Reporting by Ian McKenna. See below for a full transcript of the video.

—

DELLA ANN MACIEL: I’m walking out of there. I signed my life away. I’m like, wait a minute, what the hell — What did I do?

VOICEOVER: Della is one of 100 million Americans with medical debt, but hers is a little different.

DELLA: Here comes a girl with a clipboard. She goes, “Well, we’re gonna see if we can set you up with a CareCredit card.” And I go, “CareCredit?”

VO: She was signed up in the dentist chair by dental office staff for a credit card.

DELLA: I believe it’s just a scam.

VO: As health care becomes increasingly unaffordable for working families, medical credit cards are marketing themselves as a perfect solution.

[AD]: It’s our stress free credit card… flexible credit card… the CareCredit card…

VO: So are medical credit cards the cure? Well, for many, they aren’t.

NEWS: …that, in many cases, patients who use these products end up worse off.

DELLA: My credit is ruined. I feel like I’m being scammed.

MARTHA: They just squeeze us for every little bit of interest they make us pay.

VO: This is how multi billion dollar banks force their way into your medical

exam room.

DAVID ZHAO, Attorney at People’s Counsel: There should be no door in the doctor’s office that opens to a bank

VO: And the damage they can do once they’re in there,

APRIL KUENHOFF, Attorney at National Consumer Law Center: Egregious behavior like signing people up when they were in the dentist chair…

DAVID: Being signed up while under anesthesia…

APRIL: being charged for services that actually weren’t received.

MARTHA: What they are doing is outrageous. They are taking advantage of the fact that we need these procedures.

DAVID: I myself was the victim of a predatory medical lending practice at a dentist’s office back in 2018.

VO: David Zhao is an attorney in Los Angeles, where he provides community legal services for those affected by medical credit products. At a routine teeth cleaning, David was told he would need a costly treatment,

DAVID: But they did tell me that I could enter a zero interest payment plan. I remember that wording specifically with the dentist to cover the cost of this, like gum treatment, but it turned out I had been signed up for a credit card. I did not know that this had happened until a couple weeks later, when the CareCredit arrived in the mail and I reviewed some of the paperwork the dentist had given me and realized I had been charged over $1,000 onto that credit card immediately, and that was a Synchrony bank credit card called CareCredit.

APRIL: CareCredit really has dominated the market specifically for medical credit cards.

VO: April Kuhnhoff is a senior attorney at the National Consumer Law Center.

APRIL: Unlike general purpose credit cards, they’re typically offered by medical providers, dentist, veterinarian, certain types of clinics, and they’re offered in order to allow an extension of credit for that medical procedure at that particular facility

VO: in 2024, Synchrony Financial, which owns CareCredit, took in $3.7 billion in interest in fees from health and wellness loans.

DELLA: This is the bill that I get. And you know, it tells you about all of this other stuff that if you don’t pay, you know, the percentage is very, very high. So, yeah, it’s $1,000 in debt.

VO: Della Ann Maciel was told that she needed teeth removed and a bone graft, a dental procedure that would not be covered by her insurance. She said she was encouraged to open a CareCredit card.

DELLA: And I go, “so what if I don’t do it?” And he says, the dentist man comes back and says, Well, you won’t, we won’t be able to do it, you know, and I’m going, well, shoot, well, okay, it was to where I was in so much pain, I went ahead and did it. I wasn’t taken to a desk. I wasn’t taken out of there. It was all done in the dental chair.

VO: In a statement to More Perfect Union, Synchrony Financial said that its contracts prohibit providers from presenting financing solutions to patients while they are being treated or while they are experiencing any type of duress or impairment.

DAVID: Every single one of the cases we take on, the person is signed up while they’re in the dental chair, examination chair.

VO: The National Consumer Law Center’s report on the medical credit card industry details a number of other problems collected through a survey of consumer advocates.

APRIL: We also saw reports in our survey about people who are actually fraudulently representing people’s income in order to qualify them for financial products, people being charged by that provider for services that actually weren’t received.

VICTORIA MANGRAM: This just goes on. I have so many synchronous, synchrony and synchrony, synchronous, synchronous, just goes on and on. I have files and files of these people.

VO: Victoria Mangram went to the dentist for a consultation for teeth pain in 2022.

VICTORIA: And they stated I needed all my teeth removed, and gave me a price that was outrageous, that I knew I couldn’t afford, and they said, Well, you can apply for CareCredit.

VO: Victoria decided not to go through with the procedure at that dental office. What she didn’t know was that the cost of the procedure was already charged to a CareCredit account in her name.

VICTORIA: Months passed, I was done with them, and I was still researching other people, you know? And so that’s when I started receiving mail about me owing. And I was like, I don’t owe anything. I’m still walking around with my teeth all jacked up, you know?

VO: She’s now being sued for the cost of the procedure she didn’t get.

VICTORIA: So then I’m laying in my little abode one morning and bam, bam, bam. I’m like, what? And I go in my little box that I’m in here, “You’ve been served.” Oh, my God.

VO: Victoria thought dental staff were just checking if she was eligible, not actually applying for CareCredit. Consumer confusion like this is understandable when medical professionals are tasked with marketing financial products to patients.

APRIL: And so that can be an initial problem: Staff who aren’t necessarily trained or experts in financial products being the ones who are your point of contact as you’re discussing or reading about this product. So they might tell you incorrect things or explain something incorrectly.

VO: A synchrony spokesperson said that providers are trained through online modules before being allowed to offer CareCredit products, and are required to retrain every two years. CareCredit is accepted in more than 270,000 providers’ offices and health focused retail locations in the United States.

DAVID: It really worries me that there are all these cards being offered by people who are not financial professionals, and to consumers who are there to get medical treatment. They’re worried about the fact that they have debilitating pain in their mouth. And so even that, to me, is like a form of duress, where, if you’re in so much pain, how can you make a reasoned, rational decision about your financial future at the same time? It’s pretty ridiculous.

VO: And turning doctors and nurses and clinic staff into credit card reps sounds ridiculous too. So why is it happening?

DR. LUKE MESSEC, Emergency Physician and Medical Debt Historian: So there’s always this problem in medicine, in American medicine, in particular, where patients are expected to pay at the point of care, and because that payment is expected, then when the patient can’t afford it, then the question becomes, who foots the bill?

VO: Dr. Luke Messick is an emergency physician and medical debt historian.

LUKE: What’s happened in the last 30 to 40 years is the rise of these middlemen that promise hospitals and doctors prompt payment by taking the debt off of their books quickly and entirely. Care Credit and Synchrony is one of them.

VO: The private insurance model of American healthcare can be frustrating for patients, but it can also cause administrative burden and financial strain for providers. That’s what could make products like CareCredit so appealing, where insurance could take weeks to pay providers, CareCredit promises payments in two business days. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has warned that in many cases, patients who use medical credit products end up worse off, because of less favorable terms than generic credit cards, like higher interest rates and provisions like deferred interest.

DAVID: So what we’re looking at is a copy of my CareCredit contract from 2018 which is what I was handed in the dental chair. And this is where the deferred interest is hidden in the contract.

VO: Under a deferred interest payment plan, a customer would pay no interest during the promotional 6, 12, 18 or 24 month term. If they paid it off in the promotional period, they would have gotten it truly interest free. But if they didn’t…

DAVID: Even if there was like, literally just one cent left on the card, what they would do is kick in a deferred interest plan where like, 27% would be charged on the card of the initial amount that had been put on the card, so not on the remaining balance.

VO: Say, I had a one year deferred interest plan for $2,500. And I’m paying $200 a month. By the end of the plan, I still have $100 left on my loan, but at 25% APR, I now automatically owe more than $300 in interest right away.

DAVID: And then that would start to compound at the higher interest rate.

VO: Patients applying online for CareCredit today would get 33% APR on a deferred interest

plan.

DAVID: Then they say that minimum monthly payments are required, but that if you make the minimum monthly payments, it may or may not actually pay off the full amount. So the minimum payments that they’re suggesting for me actually would not result in me avoiding that huge APR at the end of the year. So kind of setting me up for failure here.

VO: According to the NCLC report, 47% of surveyed consumer advocates said they had clients who were told they were getting a 0% interest plan when it was actually a deferred interest credit card.

DAVID: Other practices that we’ll see though, are the up charging. So for example, once a medical provider is able to get someone signed up for one of these credit cards, they will start adding things to the credit card. So for example, a goodie bag.

MARTHA: This is everything that came in my $500 kit.

PRODUCER: And does it seem like all of this is actually worth $500?

VO: Martha Castro went for a routine dental cleaning in 2022.

DAVID: Her case is particularly troubling, because she was actually signed up for CareCredit in the dental examination chair while she had local anesthesia applied, and she was handed forms while she could not feel her mouth.

MARTHA: I told the dental hygienist, “I think the anesthesia is wearing off. I’m diabetic and I’m worried about how much you are giving me.” She said, “The dentist is coming, don’t worry. We’ll just put a little more in.” They must’ve administered the anesthesia three times.

VO: When she realized the goodie bag she didn’t ask for actually cost her $500, she tried to return it.

MARTHA: I called the card and told them not to pay for this because I didn’t want it. I told them, “Don’t pay it.” They said they had already paid for it.

VO: Synchrony Financial says that consumers are provided a variety of clear and conspicuous disclosures as part of the application process, and that about 80% of cardholders with a deferred interest plan pay off their balance before the end of the promotional period.

DAVID: I think the fact that people are able to pay it off doesn’t mean that the practices aren’t predatory. Some people just have the financial resources to do so.

VO: Martha decided to just pay off the charge for the goodie bag, which she never used to avoid being sued.

MARTHA: They take advantage of the fact that people don’t have the time to really read all the terms and that they don’t really explain it very well.

VO: Della decided that she too would pay it off for the sake of her credit score.

DELLA: You know, on a fixed income, I’m paying 167 a month. You know, it’s a big chunk out of my little money.

VO: Victoria’s court date is set for March 2026. David is helping with her case.

VICTORIA: You can’t fight this alone. These are billion dollar companies doing whatever they can to the poor.

VO: Some states have already tried to implement protections against predatory medical credit card practices like requiring patients to fill out their own credit card application forms, or banning the promotion of third party financing in treatment areas, or banning deferred interest credit products for providers entirely. But these piecemeal solutions don’t really get to the root of the problem.

DAVID: The biggest crack is the for-profit healthcare system, our insurance system, that leaves open this door for people to have to finance privately, things that could be, you know, important for their health. In a perfect world, people should have medically necessary treatment covered by their insurance. They should not have to resort to a private lender and doctors shouldn’t have to deal with any of this. There should be no door in the doctor’s office that opens to a bank.

VO: Thank you so much for watching our video. If you’d like to see more stories like this one, be sure to like and subscribe to the channel to get more More Perfect Union in your feed. And if you have any ideas for stories that you would like for us to investigate, just drop them in the comments below.

As the name suggests, patients sign up for medical credit cards through their health care providers. Providers sign on with a financial institution, like Synchrony’s CareCredit, to set up a payment platform. When patients are unable to afford their treatment costs, providers can sign them up for a credit card to cover the payment.

But this has led to some providers engaging in deceptive and predatory lending practices. According to David Zhao, an attorney at Public Counsel, some patients have been signed up in the exam chair or while under anesthesia — and some were signed up without even filling out a form themselves.

“I wasn’t taken to a desk. I wasn’t taken out of there. It was all done in the dental chair. You know, with—she had the clipboard waiting,” Della Ann Maciel, who was signed up for a medical credit card, told More Perfect Union.

Once these patients are signed up, they could be forced to grapple with eye-watering interest payments, sometimes even if they are paying according to the company’s minimum payment policy. That’s because these credit card companies often utilize deferred interest plans.

“There’s a promotional period, typically 6 to 18 months, where there’s 0 interest, and then at the end of that period, if a patient hasn’t paid that entire amount off, then that deferred interest actually reactivates,” April Kuenhoff, attorney at the National Consumer Law Center told More Perfect Union. “And so then they would have to pay off any remaining balance plus interest that would’ve accrued from the very start, from the day one of paying off that card.”

That’s what happened to David. “The minimum payments that they were suggesting for me actually would not result in me avoiding that huge APR at the end of the year,” he told us. “So [they were] setting me up for failure here.”

Patients who sign up for a CareCredit card online today would see a rate of 33 percent.

As a result, patients are often saddled with debt, and are sometimes sued by CareCredit. In the case of Victoria Mangram, lawsuits can occur without any treatment taking place. After rejecting a procedure because it was too costly, Victoria’s providers signed her up for CareCredit. Roughly a year later, she was told that Synchrony Bank had already paid her dentist and that she owed them for the costs.

“Synchrony Bank gave their money straight to [the dentist]. I said, ‘that’s between you two, not me.’ But my credit is ruined,” Mangram told More Perfect Union.

For a deeper dive into how these deceptive practices work, how patients have been affected, and some of the organizations trying to fight back against these predatory lenders, watch the full report below.

Reporting by Ian McKenna. See below for a full transcript of the video.

—

DELLA ANN MACIEL: I’m walking out of there. I signed my life away. I’m like, wait a minute, what the hell — What did I do?

VOICEOVER: Della is one of 100 million Americans with medical debt, but hers is a little different.

DELLA: Here comes a girl with a clipboard. She goes, “Well, we’re gonna see if we can set you up with a CareCredit card.” And I go, “CareCredit?”

VO: She was signed up in the dentist chair by dental office staff for a credit card.

DELLA: I believe it’s just a scam.

VO: As health care becomes increasingly unaffordable for working families, medical credit cards are marketing themselves as a perfect solution.

[AD]: It’s our stress free credit card… flexible credit card… the CareCredit card…

VO: So are medical credit cards the cure? Well, for many, they aren’t.

NEWS: …that, in many cases, patients who use these products end up worse off.

DELLA: My credit is ruined. I feel like I’m being scammed.

MARTHA: They just squeeze us for every little bit of interest they make us pay.

VO: This is how multi billion dollar banks force their way into your medical

exam room.

DAVID ZHAO, Attorney at People’s Counsel: There should be no door in the doctor’s office that opens to a bank

VO: And the damage they can do once they’re in there,

APRIL KUENHOFF, Attorney at National Consumer Law Center: Egregious behavior like signing people up when they were in the dentist chair…

DAVID: Being signed up while under anesthesia…

APRIL: being charged for services that actually weren’t received.

MARTHA: What they are doing is outrageous. They are taking advantage of the fact that we need these procedures.

DAVID: I myself was the victim of a predatory medical lending practice at a dentist’s office back in 2018.

VO: David Zhao is an attorney in Los Angeles, where he provides community legal services for those affected by medical credit products. At a routine teeth cleaning, David was told he would need a costly treatment,

DAVID: But they did tell me that I could enter a zero interest payment plan. I remember that wording specifically with the dentist to cover the cost of this, like gum treatment, but it turned out I had been signed up for a credit card. I did not know that this had happened until a couple weeks later, when the CareCredit arrived in the mail and I reviewed some of the paperwork the dentist had given me and realized I had been charged over $1,000 onto that credit card immediately, and that was a Synchrony bank credit card called CareCredit.

APRIL: CareCredit really has dominated the market specifically for medical credit cards.

VO: April Kuhnhoff is a senior attorney at the National Consumer Law Center.

APRIL: Unlike general purpose credit cards, they’re typically offered by medical providers, dentist, veterinarian, certain types of clinics, and they’re offered in order to allow an extension of credit for that medical procedure at that particular facility

VO: in 2024, Synchrony Financial, which owns CareCredit, took in $3.7 billion in interest in fees from health and wellness loans.

DELLA: This is the bill that I get. And you know, it tells you about all of this other stuff that if you don’t pay, you know, the percentage is very, very high. So, yeah, it’s $1,000 in debt.

VO: Della Ann Maciel was told that she needed teeth removed and a bone graft, a dental procedure that would not be covered by her insurance. She said she was encouraged to open a CareCredit card.

DELLA: And I go, “so what if I don’t do it?” And he says, the dentist man comes back and says, Well, you won’t, we won’t be able to do it, you know, and I’m going, well, shoot, well, okay, it was to where I was in so much pain, I went ahead and did it. I wasn’t taken to a desk. I wasn’t taken out of there. It was all done in the dental chair.

VO: In a statement to More Perfect Union, Synchrony Financial said that its contracts prohibit providers from presenting financing solutions to patients while they are being treated or while they are experiencing any type of duress or impairment.

DAVID: Every single one of the cases we take on, the person is signed up while they’re in the dental chair, examination chair.

VO: The National Consumer Law Center’s report on the medical credit card industry details a number of other problems collected through a survey of consumer advocates.

APRIL: We also saw reports in our survey about people who are actually fraudulently representing people’s income in order to qualify them for financial products, people being charged by that provider for services that actually weren’t received.

VICTORIA MANGRAM: This just goes on. I have so many synchronous, synchrony and synchrony, synchronous, synchronous, just goes on and on. I have files and files of these people.

VO: Victoria Mangram went to the dentist for a consultation for teeth pain in 2022.

VICTORIA: And they stated I needed all my teeth removed, and gave me a price that was outrageous, that I knew I couldn’t afford, and they said, Well, you can apply for CareCredit.

VO: Victoria decided not to go through with the procedure at that dental office. What she didn’t know was that the cost of the procedure was already charged to a CareCredit account in her name.

VICTORIA: Months passed, I was done with them, and I was still researching other people, you know? And so that’s when I started receiving mail about me owing. And I was like, I don’t owe anything. I’m still walking around with my teeth all jacked up, you know?

VO: She’s now being sued for the cost of the procedure she didn’t get.

VICTORIA: So then I’m laying in my little abode one morning and bam, bam, bam. I’m like, what? And I go in my little box that I’m in here, “You’ve been served.” Oh, my God.

VO: Victoria thought dental staff were just checking if she was eligible, not actually applying for CareCredit. Consumer confusion like this is understandable when medical professionals are tasked with marketing financial products to patients.

APRIL: And so that can be an initial problem: Staff who aren’t necessarily trained or experts in financial products being the ones who are your point of contact as you’re discussing or reading about this product. So they might tell you incorrect things or explain something incorrectly.

VO: A synchrony spokesperson said that providers are trained through online modules before being allowed to offer CareCredit products, and are required to retrain every two years. CareCredit is accepted in more than 270,000 providers’ offices and health focused retail locations in the United States.

DAVID: It really worries me that there are all these cards being offered by people who are not financial professionals, and to consumers who are there to get medical treatment. They’re worried about the fact that they have debilitating pain in their mouth. And so even that, to me, is like a form of duress, where, if you’re in so much pain, how can you make a reasoned, rational decision about your financial future at the same time? It’s pretty ridiculous.

VO: And turning doctors and nurses and clinic staff into credit card reps sounds ridiculous too. So why is it happening?

DR. LUKE MESSEC, Emergency Physician and Medical Debt Historian: So there’s always this problem in medicine, in American medicine, in particular, where patients are expected to pay at the point of care, and because that payment is expected, then when the patient can’t afford it, then the question becomes, who foots the bill?

VO: Dr. Luke Messick is an emergency physician and medical debt historian.

LUKE: What’s happened in the last 30 to 40 years is the rise of these middlemen that promise hospitals and doctors prompt payment by taking the debt off of their books quickly and entirely. Care Credit and Synchrony is one of them.

VO: The private insurance model of American healthcare can be frustrating for patients, but it can also cause administrative burden and financial strain for providers. That’s what could make products like CareCredit so appealing, where insurance could take weeks to pay providers, CareCredit promises payments in two business days. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has warned that in many cases, patients who use medical credit products end up worse off, because of less favorable terms than generic credit cards, like higher interest rates and provisions like deferred interest.

DAVID: So what we’re looking at is a copy of my CareCredit contract from 2018 which is what I was handed in the dental chair. And this is where the deferred interest is hidden in the contract.

VO: Under a deferred interest payment plan, a customer would pay no interest during the promotional 6, 12, 18 or 24 month term. If they paid it off in the promotional period, they would have gotten it truly interest free. But if they didn’t…

DAVID: Even if there was like, literally just one cent left on the card, what they would do is kick in a deferred interest plan where like, 27% would be charged on the card of the initial amount that had been put on the card, so not on the remaining balance.

VO: Say, I had a one year deferred interest plan for $2,500. And I’m paying $200 a month. By the end of the plan, I still have $100 left on my loan, but at 25% APR, I now automatically owe more than $300 in interest right away.

DAVID: And then that would start to compound at the higher interest rate.

VO: Patients applying online for CareCredit today would get 33% APR on a deferred interest

plan.

DAVID: Then they say that minimum monthly payments are required, but that if you make the minimum monthly payments, it may or may not actually pay off the full amount. So the minimum payments that they’re suggesting for me actually would not result in me avoiding that huge APR at the end of the year. So kind of setting me up for failure here.

VO: According to the NCLC report, 47% of surveyed consumer advocates said they had clients who were told they were getting a 0% interest plan when it was actually a deferred interest credit card.

DAVID: Other practices that we’ll see though, are the up charging. So for example, once a medical provider is able to get someone signed up for one of these credit cards, they will start adding things to the credit card. So for example, a goodie bag.

MARTHA: This is everything that came in my $500 kit.

PRODUCER: And does it seem like all of this is actually worth $500?

VO: Martha Castro went for a routine dental cleaning in 2022.

DAVID: Her case is particularly troubling, because she was actually signed up for CareCredit in the dental examination chair while she had local anesthesia applied, and she was handed forms while she could not feel her mouth.

MARTHA: I told the dental hygienist, “I think the anesthesia is wearing off. I’m diabetic and I’m worried about how much you are giving me.” She said, “The dentist is coming, don’t worry. We’ll just put a little more in.” They must’ve administered the anesthesia three times.

VO: When she realized the goodie bag she didn’t ask for actually cost her $500, she tried to return it.

MARTHA: I called the card and told them not to pay for this because I didn’t want it. I told them, “Don’t pay it.” They said they had already paid for it.

VO: Synchrony Financial says that consumers are provided a variety of clear and conspicuous disclosures as part of the application process, and that about 80% of cardholders with a deferred interest plan pay off their balance before the end of the promotional period.

DAVID: I think the fact that people are able to pay it off doesn’t mean that the practices aren’t predatory. Some people just have the financial resources to do so.

VO: Martha decided to just pay off the charge for the goodie bag, which she never used to avoid being sued.

MARTHA: They take advantage of the fact that people don’t have the time to really read all the terms and that they don’t really explain it very well.

VO: Della decided that she too would pay it off for the sake of her credit score.

DELLA: You know, on a fixed income, I’m paying 167 a month. You know, it’s a big chunk out of my little money.

VO: Victoria’s court date is set for March 2026. David is helping with her case.

VICTORIA: You can’t fight this alone. These are billion dollar companies doing whatever they can to the poor.

VO: Some states have already tried to implement protections against predatory medical credit card practices like requiring patients to fill out their own credit card application forms, or banning the promotion of third party financing in treatment areas, or banning deferred interest credit products for providers entirely. But these piecemeal solutions don’t really get to the root of the problem.

DAVID: The biggest crack is the for-profit healthcare system, our insurance system, that leaves open this door for people to have to finance privately, things that could be, you know, important for their health. In a perfect world, people should have medically necessary treatment covered by their insurance. They should not have to resort to a private lender and doctors shouldn’t have to deal with any of this. There should be no door in the doctor’s office that opens to a bank.

VO: Thank you so much for watching our video. If you’d like to see more stories like this one, be sure to like and subscribe to the channel to get more More Perfect Union in your feed. And if you have any ideas for stories that you would like for us to investigate, just drop them in the comments below.