Texas hospitals are suing patients for unpaid medical bills, a practice that has continued even as the coronavirus pandemic sends unemployment skyrocketing and spurred the state Supreme Court to pause debt collections and eviction proceedings earlier this year.
Hundreds of debt collection lawsuits have been filed since Gov. Greg Abbott declared a state of disaster because of COVID-19 in mid-March, including more than 345 suits brought by facilities associated with one Tennessee-based company, Community Health Systems Inc., according to the Health Care Research and Policy Team at Johns Hopkins University.