Declaring bankruptcy generally lets you keep your primary house and car; without bankruptcy those could be taken from you.

> differentiating medical from non-medical collection agency accounts. This will help ensure that medical collections have a lower impact on the score, commensurate with the credit risk they represent. These enhancements help lenders because it leads to a more predictive score. The median FICO Score for consumers whose only major negative references are medical collections will increase by 25 points.

http://www.fico.com/en/newsroom/fico-score-9-introduces-refi...

http://time.com/money/3092005/fico-credit-score-changes-fair...