High-cost medical credit cards a growing problem for patients. Here's what you should know.

How do you deal with the ballooning cost of medical care? The answer for a growing number of Americans: Pay it with plastic.

Medical credit cards, once limited to esoteric procedures that weren't covered by insurance, have grown in popularity in the past decade as health care costs have continued to rise and Americans are spending more out-of-pocket for even routine procedures.

But these products can cause trouble for patients, with many of them overpaying for specialized medical finance products, signing up for contracts they don't understand or, in the worst-case scenario, piling on debt they can't get out of, according to a recent report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.