Americans' Medical Debts Are Bigger Than Was Known, Totaling $140 Billion

[Eugene]

Related:
• Medical Debt in the US, 2009-2020 (JAMA)
• America's medical debt is much worse than we think (Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research)

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Source: New York Times

Americans’ Medical Debts Are Bigger Than Was Known, Totaling $140 Billion

A new study finds that health care has become the country’s largest source of debt in collections. Those debts are largest where Medicaid wasn’t expanded.

By Sarah Kliff and Margot Sanger-Katz
July 20, 2021
Updated 1:09 p.m. ET

Americans owe nearly twice as much medical debt as was previously known, and the amount owed has become increasingly concentrated in states that do not participate in the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion program.

New research published Tuesday in JAMA finds that collection agencies held $140 billion in unpaid medical bills last year,. An earlier study, examining debts in 2016, estimated that Americans held $81 billion in medical debt.

This new paper took a more complete look at which patients have outstanding medical debts, including individuals who do not have credit cards or bank accounts. Using 10 percent of all credit reports from the credit rating agency TransUnion, the paper finds that about 18 percent of Americans hold medical debt that is in collections.

The researchers found that, between 2009 and 2020, unpaid medical bills became the largest source of debt that Americans owe collections agencies. Overall debt, both from medical bills and other sources, declined during that period as the economy recovered from the Great Recession.

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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/20/upshot/medical-debt-americans-medicaid.html

[onecaliberal]

1. Yup. I have supposedly great insurance.

So many people think their insurance is good. I know I did right up until my husband had a massive stroke and required 21 days in the hospital. We left with a $238,000 hospital bill. There is no one looking to help people like this.

[appalachiablue]

2. 'Dracula healthcare'

[marie999]

3. If we are not going to have universal healthcare then at least change the billing laws.

My VA doctor sent me to the hospital for a TIA, a transient blood clot in the brain. I get a letter from the VA telling me what the hospital charges were and how much they paid. Being 100% service-connected disabled there isn't any deductible. The hospital charges were $5,066.52, not including the ER doctor. The VA paid $637.02 which is the Medicare allowable for VA CNN. That should be the most that people should be charged.