Healthcare is so expensive that 31 million adults in the US (12%) had to borrow a total of $74 billion last year to get medical care, new data shows. That includes people with health insurance, making such numbers even more troublesome.
Almost a third of the over 3,500 people surveyed by Gallup and West Health, a group of nonprofit health care organizations, said they are “very worried” that a major health debt leads to medical debt, despite the fact that major health events have some form of medical coverage.
The findings highlight how difficult it is for exposed individuals and families to financial difficulties, merely to pay for essential healthcare services.
“What’s very visible here is that families are forced to take loans and borrow to cover the expensive care they need,” West Health president Tim Rush told CBS Moneywatch. “Though these large numbers are of concern, humanity is lost in billions and trillions to reduce this to the living experiences of American individuals and families.”
To avoid debt, families may make trade-offs such as not paying groceries or rent to get the necessary care, Rush added.
Research shows that one in five adults between the ages of 18 and 28 reported borrowing money to borrow money for healthcare payments. Only 9% of Americans over the age of 65 reported that they had to borrow money to get the medical care they needed.
“There’s a lot of disparity in who borrows,” Rush said. This is because Medicare, available to people over the age of 65, provides relatively comprehensive coverage to enrollees.
As of mid-2024, US residents owed at least $220 billion in medical debt, according to data from the American Hospital Association. Medical expenses have been a major cause of personal bankruptcy over the years.
“We need reforms to find savings that can be fooled by individuals, so these situations — we should make unnecessary trade-offs — are not the future situation,” Rush added.
