Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Rep. Ro Khanna of California introduced a bill last week that, in their telling, would “eliminate” medical debt.

But there are two sides to every debt: One party’s liability is another party’s asset. And we have a word for taking away people’s assets by force: robbery.

Sanders and Khanna’s legislation would amount to robbing Americans, declaring that debts owed to them are no longer valid or binding. And why should those Americans be made to forfeit their property? Because they did something unforgivable: They helped people to get health care.

And there you have it: American progressivism, 2024 A.D.

The Sanders-Khanna plan—which thankfully has no chance of becoming law anytime soon—would “cancel” something on the order of $250 billion in medical bill debt owed mostly to Americans by other Americans. It would make it illegal to collect medical debts incurred prior to the bill’s enactment. It would censor credit-reporting agencies and forbid them from recording medical debts. And it would, of course, include some payoffs to politically connected institutions and influential constituencies. 

The two gentlemen put out a wonderfully illiterate press release, which includes this just fascinating line: “Unpaid medical bills can ruin credit scores and make it challenging to get a loan, take out a mortgage, or buy a car.” You don’t say? Failing to make good on previous debts makes it less likely that people will lend you money in the future? Well, raise my rent!

Wait until they hear about how interest rates work.

Debt is a wonderful thing with a bad reputation. 

It’s partly the word debt that bothers people: If I were to write that access to credit is a wonderful thing, fewer people would object. But credit and debt are so deeply intertwined as to be in a great many cases essentially the same thing. Debt is a way of pulling forward in time the benefits of one’s income and/or assets. If you are going to make more than enough money to pay for a house over the course of the next 40 years, a mortgage allows you to have the benefit of owning the house now rather than in 40 years. Yes, you pay for the privilege of using someone else’s money to buy a house today, but you get some pretty significant benefits: a place to live, first and foremost.