PHOENIX–A considerable number of consumers say they have been signed up for credit cards they never asked for after indicating they were looking for ways to settle medical debt.

Several news outlets have included reporting featuring consumers who were facing medical bills and then discovered the debts had been transferred to credit card accounts they did not authorize.

On its website, for example, Banner Health touts its relationship with a “Vendor” that offers credit, which can be used at “participating Banner Health locations,” AZFamily.com reported, after interviewing one person who found herself suddenly the owner of such a card account. 

“We are starting to see [medical credit cards] marketed in more and more health care settings,” Patricia Kelmar, health care director for the Arizona PIRG Education Fund, told AZFamily.com. “Oftentimes they have a zero-interest introductory rate, is what they call it, but the interest is significantly higher than what you’d see on a regular credit card, and if you miss a payment or don’t pay it off, the full balance, in a certain amount of time, the interest is retroactive.”

Another Problem Arises

There’s another potential problem, according Kelmar told the news outlet: if you use a medical credit card, “Now, you owe the money to a bank, not to the provider. The provider’s been fully paid. If you find out that you were misbilled, now, the argument is not with your provider anymore. You’ve lost that ability to fix that error,” Kelmar cautioned. 

The AZFamily.com report cited a 2023 report from the CFPB that found patients saying they had been “signed up without their consent or knowledge.” 

A woman who had been signed up for just such a card told AZFamily.com that the unexpected credit card dinged her credit score by 16 points. “I was devastated, and the more I called trying to talk to someone, ‘Hey, you can’t do this. This is illegal,’ I heard from billing agents this happens every day,” she told the news outlet.