New Medical Credit System

Hospitals want to know if you're going to pay them so they're developing a new credit scoring system to judge your ability to pay. The new medFICO score could be in use by next summer. There are concerns that a patient with a low score will receive low-quality medical care.

Hospitals claim they'll only check the score after the patient checks out to better evaluate what type of relief may be needed. (This falls into the "check is in the mail" category of fairy tale.)

The Consumer Federation of America says it found that 29% of credit scores in their survey were 50 points lower than they should have been. There are enough problems with the current Fair Isaac credit score system from identity theft and inaccurate scoring that a medical version is a bad idea.