1 in 5 households has medical debt. That includes people with private insurance.
Medical debt is leaving many people in the U.S. unable to afford groceries or pay their mortgages, even among the insured, research published Friday has found.
Medical debt is leaving many people in the U.S. unable to afford groceries or pay their mortgages — even among the insured, research published Friday has found.
Researchers say the findings, published in the journal JAMA Network Open, provide additional evidence that medical debt is a driver of both health and financial inequities in America, and highlights the need for policy reform.
"The kinds of things we saw in our study are virtually nonexistent in most other wealthy nations," said the study’s lead author David Himmelstein, a professor at the CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College in New York City. The U.S. needs a "real big change."
People with medical debt are "much more likely to be evicted, much more likely to be unable to pay for their utilities and much more likely to be food insecure," Himmelstein said.
The study analyzed three years of data from the Surveys of Income and Program Participation, a survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau that is meant to provide information on the incomes of American households.
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