Medical credit cards and high interest medical debt for services often not covered by insurance

Borrowers beware.  Medical procedures that are often not covered by insurance can be paid by credit card.  Special medical credit cards offer an extended interest-free period.  But when that period expires, a high interest rate is applied back to the time the card was charged (i.e. interest is charged for the period that would have been interest free if the balance had been paid in full.)

Bruch, Joseph Dov, Cal Chengqi Fang, and Betsy Q. Cliff. "Prevalence of Medical Credit Cards by Specialty." In JAMA Health Forum, vol. 6, no. 4, pp. e250174-e250174. American Medical Association, 2025. 

"Financial institutions are increasingly marketing medical credit cards as a solution to rising medical debt.1 Medical credit cards offer deferred interest terms, allowing patients to avoid interest payments for a promotional period of 6 to 18 months. However, if the balance remains unpaid by the end of this period, accrued interest from the start date is added to the balance.2 While the promotional period has the potential to allow relatively frictionless borrowing and alleviate financial burdens for patients, the average annual percentage rate on medical credit cards is 26.99%, which tends to be higher than other payment types. A recent survey found that about a quarter of patients who financed through medical credit cards did not pay off the balance in time to avoid the deferred interest.3 Medical credit cards were used to pay $23 billion in health care expenses, resulting in $1 billion in deferred interest payments from 2018 to 2020.2"

Same-sex marriage challenges, redux

 The NYT has the story:

Same-Sex Marriage Is the Law of the Land. Some States Are Debating It Anyway.  State efforts to urge the Supreme Court to reconsider same-sex marriage have not advanced, but they have reopened the issue.  By Amy Harmon

"In half a dozen states, Republican lawmakers have introduced resolutions urging the Supreme Court to overturn its 2015 decision, Obergefell v. Hodges. In Tennessee, a Republican legislator has proposed a new category of “covenant” marriages between “one male and one female.” And in several states, including Virginia and Oregon, Democrats are laying the groundwork to repeal old state statutes and constitutional amendments that prohibited same-sex marriage, which could come back into effect should Obergefell be overturned."

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Earlier:

Wednesday, December 14, 2022 Biden Signs Bill to Protect Same-Sex Marriage Rights