&gt; <i>Coming out of college I was in the bottom 5th percentile in the nation from random medical debts and such, and within a year I was in the 95th percentile.</i><p>This is only possible by virtue of having little to no actual credit history. If you&#x27;re in your 30&#x27;s with a mortgage, paid off student loans and paid off vehicles, you&#x27;re not going to make massive positive changes to your report in a year without major negative items falling off.<p>&gt; <i>For instance, you would think it would be a good thing for your credit to pay a delinquent bill? Almost never. It&#x27;s acknowledgement that you owed the debt to begin with, so it hurts you.</i><p>Are you referring to items at collections? Then yes and no. Collection agencies will usually offer Pay-For-Delete if you ask for it in writing, in which case you pay the item and it&#x27;s removed from your report altogether. You still end up having to pay the bill. The alternative (if it&#x27;s a valid delinquency) is to let it sit for 7 years until it falls off.<p>&gt; <i>In the case of your doctor&#x27;s office, the best thing to do is NOT pay the debt collector, and then go a different route through the doctor&#x27;s office instead.</i><p>I&#x27;ve never had a medical bill sent to collections, but I did have a (thankfully small) student loan sent while I was diligently paying the other loans because the mail was going to the wrong address. However, I can say from that experience that I could not pay my school at that point. The collector owned the bill. They had paid the school for it, so the school had already gotten its money.<p>But there&#x27;s no HIPPA violation in sending a medical bill to collections, and making false accusations like that to get out of paying a legitimate bill (or getting a legitimately delinquent account removed from your credit report) is slimy at best.