With more than half a million Michiganders facing medical debt, members of the Michigan Senate took action on Wednesday, passing a number of measures intended to regulate when those debts can be collected and create guidelines for hospitals to offer financial assistance programs.
State Sens. Sarah Anthony (D-Lansing) and Jonathan Lindsey (R-Coldwater) introduced Senate Bills 449–451 and 701–702 last year.
S.B. 449-451 seeks to standardize the financial assistance programs that hospitals are legally required to provide, establish clear eligibility metrics and block medical debt from being included in a patient’s consumer credit report, protecting them from long term harm tied to their medical costs.
S.B. 701 and 702 aim to protect against aggressive collections, by capping interest and late fees on medical debt at 3% annually following a 90-day grace period; prohibiting liens and home foreclosures stemming from medical debt; banning wage garnishment for patients who qualify for financial assistance; barring hospitals from deferring, denying, and requiring payment before providing emergency or urgent services due to outstanding medical debt; and updating the Consumer Protection Act to reflect these changes.
“When medical debt can follow someone around for the rest of their life — hurting their ability to buy a home, forcing them to forgo essential expenses like food and rent, and keeping them from getting back on their feet — we know the system is broken,” Anthony said in a statement. “By making sure hospitals clearly offer financial assistance and by putting guardrails around extreme collection practices, we can give families a real chance to get back on their feet.”
In a separate statement, Lindsey said a medical emergency shouldn’t lead to a lifetime of financial burden.
“Unfortunately, that is the case for many people,” Lindsey said.
While the bills voted out of the Senate Wednesday await further action in the House, Lindsey said there is more work to be done. He pointed to additional legislation he introduced in 2025 to bar hospitals from taking steps to collect medical debt unless they are in compliance with federal hospital price transparency laws.
Lindsey’s Senate Bill 95 passed the GOP-controlled House with full support from the chamber, and awaits further action in the Democratic majority Senate. The bill is tie-barred to Sen. Sam Singh’s (D-East Lansing) Senate Bill 94, which sits in the House Committee on Healthy Policy.
In her final state of the state address, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer called for policy to ease the burden of medical debt, aligning with the proposals laid out in Anthony and Lindsey’s legislation.
