“They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine—but only for people who can afford them.”—President Harry S. Truman, from a speech describing his view of the Republican Party, October 13, 1948.

I used to read the Wall Street Journal.  It’s been one of the oldest and most respected newspapers in the country (especially back in the days when people actually read newspapers).  The Journal has vigorously covered world events and featured a broad range of information.

Yes, they always had a passionately conservative bent, such as the time back in 1914 when they suggested Henry Ford was guilty of treason when he raised his workers’ wages.  But on balance, their coverage was for the most part reasonable.

Then along came Rupert Murdoch.

One of the world’s wealthiest men, Murdoch got his start publishing tabloids that often sold like hotcakes by featuring topless women.  He kept expanding his approach of sensationalism into mainstream news, with SKY news in the United Kingdom, FOX news in the U.S., and more recently, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

That’s when things began to change at the paper.  And from my perspective, and that of many others, it’s now gone completely off the rails. 

I’ve previously commented on a WSJ piece that claimed that Congress had no right to question the pharmaceutical industry about sky-high drug prices in the U.S.  But now, in an editorial that goes even further, the WSJ claims that any effort to shield one’s credit score from being pounded by medical debt is tantamount to “forgiving” that debt.

For those of you who’d like to read it and can manage to get past the firewall, here’s a link to the piece’s publication as it was reprinted in our local paper, the Omaha World Herald.  For the rest of you, here’s a quick rundown.

The Consumer Financial Protection Board (CFBP) has proposed excluding medical debt from consumer credit scores.  To me, that seems reasonable.  If you get in over your head buying a Cadillac when you can only afford a Chevy, that’s your choice, and your credit rating should reflect that.

But health care’s a different story.  Nobody “chooses” to get sick.  No one “chooses” to have surgery.

According the WSJ piece, though, somehow not including medical debt in a credit report is no different from “forgiving” debt.  This isn’t just false, it’s egregiously false.  Regardless of the credit report, you’re still stuck with the debt.

The WSJ goes even further.  It claims that if you have health insurance you are “protected” from debt.  Again, this simply is false.  Over half of all Americans who become bankrupt because of medical debt  had insurance when their medical problems began. 

Later in the piece, the WSJ claims that removing debt from credit reports will discourage people from buying insurance in the first place.  I’m not going to say this is the most asinine statement I’ve ever heard, it’s just that I’m not quite sure what else might be.

But the WSJ is just getting started. “A credit-report blemish,” they claim, “is the only tool health care providers have to encourage payment.”

Sorry, but that’s also nonsense.  Ask anyone who’s struggling to pay off medical bills and getting nonstop calls from collection agencies.

Further in the piece, the WSJ argues that medical debt is really no big deal to begin with, since “only” 15 million Americans have to deal with it, and the debt “only” averages $3,100 per person.

Maybe that’s not much to the editors of the Wall Street Journal, but for many of the patients I cared for, it was a hell of a lot of money.  Perhaps the folks at the WSJ should try living in the real world for a while.

There’s plenty more.  The WSJ tries to make the looping argument that since reducing a credit score is the same as forgiving debt, that it will therefore create more debt, that people will stop buying insurance (because they only care about their credit scores, right?), which will in turn drive up costs, which will in turn cause hospitals to charge more, which will in turn cause more uninsured.

I’ll describe this sort of thinking in two words.  Pure Fantasy.

Don’t take my word for it.  Instead, ask yourself this question.  If your child desperately needed an operation, or needed an expensive medication, would you really stop and say, “But wait, will this affect my credit score?” And then forgo the treatment?

Would you really?  Would the editors of the WSJ?  I doubt it.

So let’s get back to the real world.  Not being forced to include medical debt on your credit report is not the same as “forgiving” debt.  People don’t say, “Woopie!  Now I won’t buy insurance if my credit score’s OK!”  any more than they would say “Sorry, kid, no insulin for you this week because I don’t want to screw up my credit score.”

This brings up an interesting question.  Just who is the Wall Street Journal trying to protect with this sort of bizarre logic?  Lending institutions?  Private equity?  Who knows?  But it’s certainly not the American people.

Because as the WSJ well knows, we’re already hammered by the highest medical costs—as well as the highest levels of medical debt—in the world.

And if the Wall Street Journal doesn’t have an issue with that, then it’s clearly out of touch with reality.