An investigation by The Fresno Bee for The California Divide, a statewide media project examining economic inequality, has found that some dentists appear to be inflating bills and pressuring patients to put their services on a credit card.

Medical credit cards are not all that different from other credit cards on the market. But customers don’t need to go to a bank to take them out; health care providers can fill out a client’s application and have it approved in seconds.

“The reason that they are popular is that they’re marketed in a way that oversimplifies in an almost misleading way what the person is obligated to. It will say zero percent financing,” said Gina Calabrese, a professor of legal clinical education at St. John’s University Calabrese. “Most financing agreements are written in a way the average person can’t really comprehend.”

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