The author of a recently released study that estimated how much medical debt is being carried by individuals across the United States has published an op-ed that calls on state and federal governments to boost their protections of individuals from the “burden of medical debt.”
Neale Mahoney, a professor and health economist at Stanford University who specializes in teaching about how health insurance can increase access to medical care, said that if governments do not act, households “will continue to receive letters and phone calls from debt collectors, pressing for payments for often staggeringly large medical bills.”
Mahoney was the lead author of a study that was released last month that pegged the amount of unpaid medical debt being worked by collection agencies at $140 billion, which is about twice as much as the total that was being worked five years ago. The study, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), revealed that states which do not participate in the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion program had more individuals with healthcare debts, and the size of those debts was higher than states that did participate in the program. About 18% of the country was estimated to have an unpaid medical debt, with the average debt of $429.
The number of Americans, Mahoney points out, who think that the federal government should make sure that everyone in the country has access to health insurance has increased to 56% from 47% in the past decade.
Individuals who do not have medical debts are likely to go back to their doctors for follow-up care, which creates a healthier country, Mahoney wrote. “Researchers still have much to learn about the full toll of medical debt — and the benefits of policies that could be used to reduce its burden,” he said. “The pandemic has also imposed a tremendous burden on households across the country — and underscored the view that we’re all in it together when it comes to health. Now is the time for governments to step up and protect their citizens from the burden of medical debt.”
