Under the new rules, a lender is allowed to obtain an applicant's payment history from a medical facility or to contact a surgeon about the cost of a procedure that the applicant wants to finance. Am I correct that any medically related situations such as these, first require the applicant to provide his/her written permission or does the written permission apply only to certain circumstances?

Lois, Having just gone through a lot of this due to my mother in law's illness, I can tell you that written permission is required by the medical facility/doctor even if it isn't required by the FCRA. Most are very reluctant to give third parties any information due to HIPAA compliance. I actually had to obtain a POA to get the insurance company to talk to me about the direct debit of a premium! May as well get it- you'll need it at some point!
BC

I thought there was something in the proposed section 411 that required this under certain circumstances, but you are right, if we need to verify something, we'll have to have permission since we won't get it without (and still may not get it even with permission). I'm really concerned about training the lenders on the do's and don'ts of this.
Fortunately 2006 is a long time away (not).