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The Problem of Rising Healthcare Costs and Spending
Published in Kant Patel, Mark Rushefsky, Healthcare Politics and Policy in America, 2019
A related aspect of medical debt is medical bankruptcy. Bankruptcies increased in the 2000s as a result of the housing crisis, the Great Recession (2007–2009), and the slow recovery from the recession. Some portion of those bankruptcies were due to extremely high medical costs. The percentage of bankruptcies due to medical costs is in some dispute. At the high end was a prominent study that appeared in 2009 in The Journal of the American Medical Association. The authors estimated that 62.1 percent of bankruptcies in 2007 (the first year of the Great Recession) were due to medical debts (Himmelstein et al. 2009). One reason importance has been attached to this study is that one of the co-authors was Elizabeth Warren, at the time a law professor at Harvard and later a very strong consumer advocate and US senator from Massachusetts, and contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee.
Getting rid of overstated medical bills
Published in Phelps Charles E, Parente Stephen T, The Economics of US Health Care Policy, 2017
Phelps Charles E, Parente Stephen T
One study that sampled individuals throughout the United States who had filed for bankruptcy found that 60% of bankruptcy filings were because of medical debt (according to the filers’ declaration).3 Almost all of them (92%) had medical debt exceeding either $5000 or 10% of pretax income. A separate analysis in 2013 by a price-comparison survey company found a similar result—1.7 million medically-related bankruptcy filings per year, accounting for three in five of all filings, and also found that 17 million people had their credit ratings adversely affected by medical debt.4
Understanding the Economic Behavior of the Medically Uninsured in the United States
Published in Hospital Topics, 2020
The present study however, due to its cross-sectional analysis is strictly correlational – and should not imply any causation between study variables – further investigation is warranted to determine true causation. Consequences of uninsurance have been studied as outlined above; however, the present study suggests that relationships may exist between uninsurance and personal finance behaviors. This study, therefore, necessitates future work that determines potential causation between uninsurance and financial health. A potential explanation of this relationship could be uncovered by examining the nature of unpaid medical debt. Medical debt typically is accrued quickly, without planning, and usually is accompanied with a loss of income (Plax and Seifert 2006). Only by using longitudinal data can we determine if medical debt is the result or cause of being uninsured. Further investigation is warranted in examining the relationship between personal financial behavior and bankruptcy. A focus should be applied in teasing out the accurate risk coefficient that lack of health insurance has on bankruptcy. This could affect policy decisions; namely, the ACA Individual Mandate for coverage. In conclusion, the consequences of being uninsured must begin to include consequences that are outside of physical health, it must include personal-financial, personal-relationship, and macroeconomic health.
How does paid sick leave relate to health care affordability and poverty among US workers?
Published in Social Work in Health Care, 2018
Patricia Stoddard-Dare, LeaAnne DeRigne, Christopher Mallett, Linda Quinn
This study finds adult workers who lack paid sick leave are more likely to have higher total family medical costs. This finding is consistent with previous research which demonstrates a link between delays in preventative and acute health care seeking and access to paid sick leave. Specifically, medical care is more likely to be delayed and forgone entirely for those without paid sick leave (DeRigne et al., 2016). Similarly, those without paid sick leave are less likely to have seen a doctor it the past 12 months and less likely to receive preventative cancer screenings (Peipins et al., 2012). Additionally, we know workers with paid sick leave are less likely to attend work while sick (DeRigne et al., 2016). This is relevant since workers who take time off work when they are sick are more likely to recuperate faster and with fewer complications, again reducing the likelihood of more expensive care (Kivimäki et al., 2005). Altogether, a picture emerges of workers unable to address their health care needs in a timely manner who wind up with complicated and expensive medical needs. These same workers lose wages when they stay home from work placing them in a precarious economic position of having higher medical costs, and lost wages due to illness. It is important to note that medical debt is a leading cause of bankruptcy (Himmelstein, Thorne, Warren, & Woolhandler, 2009).
Fintech and medical expenses: What social workers should know
Published in Social Work in Health Care, 2023
Mathieu Despard, Sally A. Hageman, Maudia Ahmad
Difficulties affording OOP healthcare expenses may result in accumulating medical debt; Himmelstein et al. (2019) found that nearly 60% of individuals filing for bankruptcy cited medical expenses as a key reason. Difficulty repaying medical debt may render individuals reluctant to seek additional care because it would add to an already unmanageable debt burden (Doty et al., 2005).