100 Million Americans Have Health Care Debt: Benjamin Franklin once said, “God heals, and the doctor takes the fees.” The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) recently reported: “In the past five years, more than half of U.S. adults report they’ve gone into debt because of medical or dental bills … A quarter of adults with health care debt owe more than $5,000. And about 1 in 5 with any amount of debt said they don’t expect to ever pay it off … Debt from health care is nearly twice as common for adults under 30 as for those 65 and older … About 1 in 7 people with debt said they’ve been denied access to a hospital, doctor, or other provider because of unpaid bills … An even greater share ― about two-thirds ― have put off care they or a family member need because of cost … Hospitals recorded their most profitable year on record in 2019, notching an aggregate profit margin of 7.6% … Half of U.S. adults don’t have the cash to cover an unexpected $500 health care bill … 58% of debts recorded in collections were for a medical bill (nearly four times as many debts attributable to telecom bills, the next most common form of debt on credit records) … About 50 million adults ― roughly 1 in 5 ― are paying off bills for their own care or a family member’s through an installment plan with a hospital or other provider (such debt arrangements don’t appear on credit reports unless a patient stops paying) … One in 10 owe money to a friend or family member who covered their medical or dental bills, another form of borrowing not customarily measured … still more debt ends up on credit cards, as patients charge their bills and run up balances, piling high interest rates on top of what they owe for care. About 1 in 6 adults are paying off a medical or dental bill they put on a card (the typical cardholder’s monthly balance jumped 34% after a major medical expense) … collective medical debt totaled at least $195 billion in 2019, larger than the economy of Greece … Nearly half of Americans in households making more than $90,000 a year have incurred health care debt in the past five years … Women are more likely than men to be in debt. And parents more commonly have health care debt than people without children. But the crisis has landed hardest on the poorest and uninsured … Black adults are 50% more likely and Hispanic adults 35% more likely than whites to owe money for care … In the 100 U.S. counties with the highest levels of chronic disease, nearly a quarter of adults have medical debt on their credit records, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 in the healthiest counties … About a third of seniors have owed money for care, the poll found. And 37% of these said they or someone in their household have been forced to cut spending on food, clothing, or other essentials because of what they owe; 12% said they’ve taken on extra work … Last year the average annual deductible for a single worker with job-based coverage topped $1,400, almost four times what it was in 2006 … From 2012 to 2016, prices for medical care surged 16%, almost four times the rate of overall inflation … For many Americans, debt from medical or dental care may be relatively low. About a third owe less than $1,000.”
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