Article snippet: WASHINGTON — Bernie Sanders has long wanted to remake the health care system so no one will have to pay directly for medical care again. Now, he also wants to go back and cancel all the medical debts of people who have been billed under the current system. In a plan released Saturday, Sanders, the Vermont senator and presidential candidate, proposes wiping out an estimated $81 billion in existing debt and changing rules around debt collection and bankruptcy. He also calls for replacing the giant credit reporting agencies with a “public credit registry” that would ignore medical debt when calculating credit scores. The proposals reflect Sanders’s concern that the medical system has placed financial hardships on too many Americans, by discouraging them from seeking needed medical care — but also by saddling them with expensive and unfair bills that can harm their financial security, ding their credit, and, in some cases, lead to bankruptcy. The plan is Sanders’s latest effort to transform the health care system in America, a goal on which he has staked not just his second presidential run, but much of his political legacy. His proposal also separates him from other presidential candidates: While several of them have come to embrace his “Medicare for all” plan to create a government-run health insurance system, he is the first top-tier contender to call for such drastic measures on medical debt. “We’re addressing it on both ends,” Sanders said. “We’re addressing it... Link to the full article to read more