: What incentive one has to pay a medical bill in this situation? I was talking to a friend over the weekend and he told me that some states in the United States don't allow unpaid medical bills to be reported in the person's

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My question here has to be why it takes the threat of having something show up on your credit report in order for people to pay it.

This is one reason health care in America is so expensive. Hospitals get stuck with unpaid bills, which somebody (usually the people with health insurance) ends up having to pay. As a result, the insurance companies raise rates to cover their costs, so everyone else pays.

I am not defending the costs of American healthcare here, I am simply pointing out one of the drivers of costs, so please don't have fits on me about this! (chuckle) No doubt the insurance and drug companies carry a responsibility here too.

I don't know where your friend got his information about medical bills not being sent to collections or showing up on credit reports, but the number one source of bankruptcies in the United States is medical bills the debtor can't pay (read this article on Investopedia), so clearly people can't just walk away from what they owe and ignore the collection agencies.

The moral of the story (even though you wanted to avoid a discussion on morality!) is to pay what you owe. After all, if you render a service, you'd fully (and rightfully) expect to be paid for it, whether you could take it to collections or not. Imagine if it was that easy for your employer to just not pay you...

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Just because the bill can't be reported doesn't mean the debt doesn't exist and isn't owed. So apart from the obvious decade of collections calls, and withholding of your medical records from the clinic, you can still be sued.

While I haven't read a statute that lays out the non-reportability of medical collections, I'm sure an unpaid judgement can be reported. And if the judgement is also restricted from reporting, now you have a judgement against you and liens can be attached to your property.

Collections efforts don't end at phone calls from a collection agency.

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First off, I believe the premise of your question is incorrect. (Can you provide a reference for some states that don't allow medical bills to affect your credit?) In general, unpaid medical bills may be turned over to collection agencies who in turn often report to the credit bureaus. However, in 2015 there were some significant changes to the rules that credit bureaus use for medical bills, mainly:

Medical bills cannot adversely affect your credit unless they remain unpaid for 180 days.
Once paid, negative marks on your report due to unpaid medical bills are removed immediately from your report.

The second change actually provides more incentive to pay your unpaid medical bills once they've hit your credit report (in comparison to any other unpaid bills you may have).

All that being said, even if medical bills could not hit your report, I don't think you can simply discount ethics and morality. Here's a similar question: Suppose you go to a diner for breakfast and leave without paying. Assuming they won't call the police or report it to the credit bureaus, what incentive would you have to pay for your meal?