{"id":2188,"date":"2023-12-18T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-18T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shinsori.me\/?p=2188"},"modified":"2023-12-18T20:32:44","modified_gmt":"2023-12-18T20:32:44","slug":"how-many-americans-have-medical-debt-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/shinsori.me\/index.php\/2023\/12\/18\/how-many-americans-have-medical-debt-opinion\/","title":{"rendered":"How many Americans have medical debt? | Opinion"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"050420_redo_health_care_f.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Michelle Budge, Deseret News<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

The U.S. has a convoluted, confusing and complicated health care system. For-profit and not-for-profit organizations frequently compete with each other and while large profits and fortunes are made, many patients are seriously burdened with poor access and massive debt.<\/p>\n

Health insurance no longer achieves the intended policy benefit of financial security. According to KFF, formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation, the annual cost of health insurance for a family<\/a> is now almost $24,000, rising 47% since 2013. On average, employers pay 71% of this cost while workers pay 29%. (Employees at smaller firms pay up to 38% of the premium.) On top of this, almost all employees (90%) have deductibles and coinsurance to pay.<\/p>\n

In 2022, NPR investigated medical debt<\/a> in the U.S. and found that the combined high cost of premiums, deductibles, coinsurance and copays has led to 100 million people in the U.S. having medical debt. While hospitals and insurance companies are more profitable than ever, more than half of U.S. adults have gone into debt to pay their medical bills. Today, medical debt is the most common debt on credit records and in collections. This has led to about two-thirds of adults putting off care because of costs and has caused many to declare bankruptcy. In Utah, 12.9% of the population, or about 450,000 people, have medical debt in collections.<\/p>\n

A major factor contributing to the high cost of health care is the regional dominance of small numbers of health care organizations; such market power allows medical corporations to charge higher prices, reap higher profits, pay higher executive salaries and drive consumer debt. A summary of this research across the past two decades published by Forbes<\/a> suggests that \u201cde facto monopolies\u201d exist in almost every health care sector today. In the U.S., 10 health care systems own one-sixth of all hospitals and combine for over $226 billion in revenues. Concentrated markets with dominant health care providers lead to higher prices without improvements in quality. <\/p>\n

\n
Related<\/div>\n