The prevalence of medical debt is a problem unique to America. About 40% of US adults have at least $250 in medical debt, according to a survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
“The history of health care debt is basically the history of changing answers to the question: If a patient can’t pay their bills, who will pay?” Dr. Luke Messac, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said.
As healthcare costs have risen over the past 50 years, patients have been asked to pay more out-of-pocket for healthcare.
There are many complex reasons for rising health care costs, including a lack of prioritization of preventive care and lack of price transparency, but one of the biggest drivers of inflation has been the rise of health insurance.
“It was when we got this third-party payment system where the patient doesn’t have to pay all of the costs directly and the insurance company pays part of it,” he said. Dr. Peter Constvedt, senior health policy faculty at George Mason University; “This puts constant upward pressure on pricing. Because if you’re going to get paid, why not pay a little more?”
In the early 2000s, federal law significantly reshaped how insurance plans share costs, and the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 created a boom in health insurance plans with high deductibles.
A deductible is an amount that a policyholder must pay in advance before a health insurance plan can begin. The average personal deductible for 2022 is about $1,760, double what he was in 2006 after adjusting for inflation.
About 70% of low-income adults say they can’t afford a $500 unexpected medical bill. And nearly a quarter of her households with incomes over $90,000 said they couldn’t afford it any time soon.
“It’s a problem when most people can’t afford a $500 bill, even if they don’t win a Nobel Prize in Economics, and the average health insurance deductible at work is currently over $1,500,” he said. said Norm Levy, senior correspondent for Kaiser Health News. “In this country, you can’t typically walk into an emergency room or hospital for less than a few thousand dollars.”
look video See above to learn more about how medical debt has become commonplace in the U.S. healthcare system and what we can do to change it.
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