Medical debt fell during the pandemic: how can the decline be sustained?
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Author(s):
- Karpman, Michael, author Martinchek, Kassandra, author Braga, Breno, (Economist) author
- Contributor(s):
- Urban Institute, issuing body.
- Publication:
- Washington, DC : Urban Institute, May 2022
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- COVID-19 -- economics Healthcare Disparities -- statistics & numerical data Health Equity -- economics Health Expenditures -- trends Health Policy Social Mobility United States
- Genre(s):
- Technical Report
- Abstract:
- People often incur medical debt when they receive bills they cannot afford to pay from hospitals, doctors’ offices, or other health care providers. Providers may be willing to negotiate a lower bill, offer financial assistance to reduce the amount owed, or develop a payment plan. However, these options are not always available or sufficient for protecting people from incurring debt, which can take the form of a balance owed to providers or a credit card payment or loan. The shares of adults with problems paying medical bills and past-due medical debt in collections declined as the economy recovered from the Great Recession and the major health insurance coverage provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) took effect. But limited research has examined trends in medical debt in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic’s extensive economic and health impacts.1 In this brief, we examine the prevalence of medical debt and provide the first national estimates of changes in the share of adults with medical debt following the onset of the pandemic using two complementary data sources: (1) the Urban Institute’s Health Reform Monitoring Survey (HRMS), a nationally representative survey of adults ages 18 to 64, and (2) Urban Institute credit bureau data, a nationally representative panel of deidentified, consumer-level records from a major credit bureau. We use 2018–21 data from the HRMS to estimate the share of nonelderly adults reporting they or their families have medical bills that they are paying off over time (hereafter called “medical debt”) and the share reporting problems paying family medical bills in the past 12 months. We also use 2018–21 credit bureau data to estimate the share of adults with credit bureau records who have medical debt in collections. Focusing on multiple measures allows us to capture different aspects of the nation’s medical debt challenges, including the stock of debt accumulated over many years as well as recent difficulties paying medical bills. For both data sources, we highlight prepandemic trends and focus on changes between the data collection period immediately before the pandemic and the most recent data collection period.
- Copyright:
- Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY-NC-DC license. (More information)
- Extent:
- 1 online resource (1 PDF file (23 pages))
- Illustrations:
- Illustrations
- NLM Unique ID:
- 9918486684906676 (See catalog record)
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/9918486684906676