Many healthcare providers have adopted a new strategy when dealing with these patients, placing customer service as the primary objective and debt collection as a secondary priority.

FORBES: Financial Holistics: A Patient-centric Approach to Collecting Unpaid Medical Bills

They were sold as an add-on when customers were understandably focussing on their primary objective - getting a credit card, a loan or a mortgage.

BBC: PPI: How did the bill ever get so big?