I hate when people make terrible financial decisions, like running up cancer treatment bills that they can't afford to pay.

Looking at this strictly from the perspective of creditworthiness, the question isn't the morality of the debt but whether this influences that person's ability to pay their credit card bill on time.

Based on the CFPB's data, if that's the sole delinquency on the report, the answer is a coin flip [1].

[1] https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/201412_cfpb_reports_cons... page 7

It’s worth remembering that this won’t impact loaners, though; they don’t care as long as everyone has to do it so they aren’t getting undercut on rates.

They’ll just raise interest rates to cover the extra delinquencies, making cars/houses/etc less affordable to the poor. Hopefully by a small amount if the CFPB is right.

Look, medical debt is very different from other kinds of debt in that it is usually incurred suddenly and unwillingly and at ruinous expense. Just using your family medical history would be a better improvement on the model and I've got the feeling that wouldnt strike you as just.

Any of the other times when efforts were made to extend credit to people with bad credit scores, and it ends up with indebted people being in worse debt.

> Not so sure why you're down on doing good

a do-gooder is someone who has a naive conviction of their own moral superiority and agency

I'm saying there's people who, by never doubting their own agency & fallibility, force the unfortunate people they're trying to help into even worse misfortune.