Where Medical Debt Complaints Are Most Common, by State (2026)

Louisiana, Georgia, and Nevada have the highest rate of medical-debt complaints per capita in the most recent CFPB data we have (April 13–July 14, 2026), each well above the roughly 5.05 complaints per million residents national rate. California and New York are among the lowest, despite having the most complaints in raw volume simply by being the largest states. Snapshot pulled from the CFPB Consumer Complaint Database, current through July 2026.

Highest rate: the 10 states with the most medical-debt complaints per capita

Ranked by complaints per million residents, states with fewer than 10 complaints in this window excluded to avoid reporting large-looking rates off tiny denominators (see Methodology).

Lowest rate: the 10 states with the fewest medical-debt complaints per capita

Highest raw volume: where the most complaints are actually filed

Not adjusted for population — this is just the biggest states by total complaint count, included for reference since some readers want raw scale rather than a per-capita rate.

Dealing with a medical bill yourself? Start with what a hospital has to do before sending you to collections, and see Medical Debt for how it behaves differently on your credit report than other debt.

Full state list

All 50 states and D.C., sorted by rate per million residents, including states below the 10-complaint threshold.

Methodology

Source: our production database (the same one behind Complaint Trends), which ingests directly from the live CFPB Consumer Complaint Database public API on a daily cron. Complaints are categorized as "medical-debt" when their CFPB sub-product field contains "medical." Counts here reflect the actual available window in our data: April 13, 2026 through July 14, 2026.

Why this isn't a year-over-year ranking like our other complaint-surge pages: our medical-debt category data starts April 2026, following a scoped backfill — there's no full prior-year window to compare against yet. Rather than force a misleading year-over-year percentage off a partial window, this page ranks the current per-capita rate instead, and will convert to a trend ranking once a full comparable window exists.

Population source: U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2025 (July 1, 2025) state population estimates.

The 10-complaint threshold: states with fewer than 10 medical-debt complaints in this window are excluded from the "highest" and "lowest" rate tables — at that low a count, one or two complaints can swing a per-million rate dramatically, which would misrepresent noise as a real signal. They're still shown in the full state list below.

What this measures and doesn't: a CFPB complaint means a consumer submitted one and the company was given a chance to respond — it isn't a lawsuit, a fine, a verified violation, or proof of wrongdoing by any particular hospital, collector, or debt buyer. Complaint volume is also affected by awareness of the complaint process itself, not just underlying billing or collection activity.