Presumptive Vice Presidential Nominee Governor Tim Walz has been a steadfast champion in tackling the medical debt crisis. 

Earlier this year, Governor Walz signed into law landmark legislation to protect patients from medical debt. 

The legislation eases the burden of medical debt by:

  • Banning medical providers from withholding medically necessary care due to unpaid debt;
  • Preventing medical debt from impacting credit scores;
  • Eliminating automatic transfers of medical debt to a patient’s spouse;
  • Establishing strong new protections from unethical medical debt collections practices;
  • Requiring medical providers to publish their medical debt collection practices;
  • Creating a new process to help people dispute medical coding and billing errors.

At the signing, Governor Walz said: “Life-saving cancer treatments or a trip to the emergency room shouldn’t cause a tanked credit score or a lifetime of debt.”

Community Catalyst Action Fund recently laid out in detail Vice President Harris’ long record of champion tackling the medical debt crisis and fighting corporate greed.  

So, her selection of Walz makes perfect sense. And what is crystal clear is that the Harris/Walz ticket understands the issue and urgent need for action to put more economic protections in place for people seeking care and for making health care more affordable. Voters understand this too. Recent polling commissioned by Community Catalyst Action Fund from HIT Strategies found that 75% of voters support removing medical debt from credit reports – and 66% of voters say they would feel more favorable towards a policymaker that supports these efforts.

It is also clear that the Harris/Walz ticket recognizes this is not some abstract policy debate that happens in Washington or St. Paul. Medical debt has real world impacts on real people. People’s health is directly tied to their economic well being. Here are just a few stories that demonstrate the broad impact – and support – for action on medical debt. It is critical that policymakers continue to heed people’s demands to put people over profit. People like Maureen and Adam, both from Minnesota, are joining the movement demanding bolder action: 

  • “My wife had a heart attack that led to a brain injury. This created financial havoc in our lives as a family as I tried to care for her, our three young children, work and deal with immense debt.” — Adam H.
  • “My health struggles have cost me everything. Every cent I saved for retirement is gone. My husband left me. At 63, I had to take early retirement for health reasons which pretty much ensures my relative poverty. I’m an educated mental health worker who is now facing the same struggles I’ve helped others with. It’s just hard and expensive and people just don’t understand.” — Maureen B.

For more than two years, Community Catalyst has been meeting with Biden-Harris administration officials on medical debt, including officials from the Domestic Policy Council, National Economic Council, CFPB, HHS, Treasury, IRS, FTC, and other agencies. Community Catalyst has also been working with Congressional and state partners across the country on how to make marketplace plans more affordable so that people are paying less out of pocket on premiums and can afford marketplace coverage.  

If you would like to learn more about the Harris/Walz ticket’s record on health and economic justice, or the Community Catalyst Action Fund’s policy positions on addressing the root causes of the medical debt crisis, please feel free to reach out. We can also connect you with our partners and advocates in Minnesota.