After publishing research showing the amount of unpaid medical debt is significantly higher than previously thought, an economics professor at Stanford has continued to analyze his data and has reached another conclusion — the financial burden of medical debt is keeping individuals from going back to see their doctors, which is leading to more health problems for those individuals. Removing those debts, the professor concludes, improves the likelihood that those individuals will go back to their doctors and get the much-needed treatment they should be getting. This research gives collectors another benefit they can promote when working medical debt accounts — paying off the debt means the patient is likely to keep seeking medical care.
The latest round of conclusions from Neale Mahoney were published in a working paper last month by the National Bureau of Economic Research, according to a published report.
Analyzing the behaviors of individuals who had their debts forgiven through a financial assistance program offered by Kaiser Permanente hospitals in California, Mahoney identified a “sharp and immediate” spike in the number of doctor visits by those individuals once their debts were forgiven.
“This research tells us that, if you relieve some of the financial burden from low-income people with medical debt, you see really large increases in health care use and care that is of high value,” Mahoney said. “All of this is really important for improving health outcomes.”
Mahoney’s initial research found that the amount of unpaid medical debts in the United States exceeded $140 billion, which is about twice the amount that was being worked by collection agencies 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.
