For a long time, Misty Castaneda had terrible credit. Even though she had health insurance, the hair stylist from Colorado owed a hospital around $20,000 for a $200,000 open-heart surgery in 2010 that had been necessary to keep her alive, she says.
Castaneda’s credit was so bad that she stayed in a bad relationship for more than a decade, she says, because she knew that without her husband’s credit score, she wouldn’t be able to rent an apartment, buy a car, or take out a credit card.
So when she recently heard that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) had finalized a rule that would keep medical debt off personal credit reports, she knew she had to advocate on behalf of it. “It would just open the doors for so many people like me,” says Castaneda, now 47 and divorced.
Although the rule keeping medical debt off credit reports was finalized on Jan. 7, it may be on the chopping block as Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) turns its sights to the CFPB. It’s not clear what powers the bureau will retain after Musk and his allies in the Trump Administration are through with it.
Trump has fired the CFPB’s director. Its acting replacement, Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought, ordered all employees to stop work earlier this week, effectively suspending much of the bureau’s bread-and-butter activities. In an email, employees were told to not approve or issue rules or guidance and that they should suspend the effective date of rules that had not yet become effective, which includes the medical debt rule. Employees were also told to cease any pending investigations and not issue any public communications of any type. Vought said on X on Feb. 8 that he would be notifying the Federal Reserve that the CFPB would not be taking its next funding draw “because it is not ‘reasonably necessary’ to carry out its duties.”
“CFPB RIP,” Musk wrote on X on Feb. 7.
