Do medical bills affect your credit score?
This is a very common doubt, and the answer is it depends on how you handle the bill. Simply having a medical bill in your name does not affect your credit score. Hospitals, doctors, or labs don’t report your bills directly to credit bureaus.
The problem starts if you don’t pay the bill on time. If a bill remains unpaid for a long time, it is handed over to a collection agency.
Once it is reported as a collection account, it does impact your credit score negatively, just like missing a loan EMI or a credit card payment.
Medical bills themselves don’t lower your credit score, but unpaid medical bills sent to collections do. The safest way is to clear them quickly or work with the hospital before it reaches a collections stage.