Berkeley Talks: The transformation of US medical debt collection

March 18, 2025

A podcast is now available of a Berkeley Center for Social Medicine event featuring Luke Messac. Messac discusses how the nation’s medical debt collection system became a predatory practice that puts people at risk of profound financial and legal consequences. Messac says the changing role of hospitals, and the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s, transformed how medical debts are collected in the U.S.