One in five families have trouble paying medical bills

[eridani]

National Center for Health Statistics
March 2012
Financial Burden of Medical Care: Early Release of Estimates From the National Health Interview Survey, January-June 2011
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhis/earlyrelease/financial_burden_of_medical_care_032012.pdf

Previous work has shown that in 2010, more than one in five Americans were in families reporting problems paying medical bills. In 2011, three new questions addressing financial burden of medical care were added to the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) Family component. These questions addressed problems paying medical bills, paying medical bills over time, and having medical bills that cannot be paid at all.

In the first 6 months of 2011, one in three persons was in a family experiencing financial burden of medical care. One in 5 persons was in a family having problems paying medical bills, 1 in 4 persons was in a family paying medical bills over time, and 1 in 10 persons was in a family that had medical bills they were unable to pay at all.

Comment by Don McCanne of PNHP: This new report adds to the profusion of policy studies confirming that Americans continue to experience financial burdens in paying their medical bills. Unfortunately, this problem will not go away after the Affordable Care Act is fully implemented.

Well over 20 million people will remain uninsured, and perhaps a third or more of our population will be under-insured, due to the low actuarial value plans to be offered in the exchanges, and especially due to the increasing prevalence of high-deductibles in employer-sponsored plans. In fact. under-insurance likely will soon be the norm.

Contrast that with John Conyers' HR 676, the "Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act," which states, "The health care benefits under this Act cover all medically necessary services... No deductibles, copayments, coinsurance, or other cost-sharing shall be imposed with respect to covered benefits."

For those who say we can't afford this, many other nations provide all of their people comprehensive care with no out-of-pocket expenses, at an average cost of only half of what we are spending on health care.

We can't afford not to do it.

My comment: We are altready paying for universal health care--we just aren't getting it.

[ejpoeta]

1. that's what I try to explain to people. We are already paying

three times for our insurance. First we pay our insurance through work. Then we pay for medicaid and medicare through our taxes. Then we pay again for those who are uninsured through higher costs at hospital and doctor and other medical places. Also, we pay into a private insurer while we are healthy and where does that money go when we switch jobs or our employer changes insurers? We pay into it while we are healthy and don't need it and then end either get old enough to be on medicare where our need to use it increases with age, or we get sick and how often can you be sick and keep working? How many end up on medicaid anyway when they need to use it the most??

We pay for it. We pay into it but instead of our contributions following us so it's there when we need it because we are all paying into one big pool, we keep being moved from pool to pool. How can it ever work when the insurance companies can make sure they have healthy people to cover and the ones who actually use it are mostly on the public insurance or medicare?

[zipplewrath]

2. Why I hate the ACA title

The HCR act did little to nothing to make health CARE affordable to a large number of people. Health care is projected, by the White House, to inflate at around 7% per year EVEN AFTER the act is fully implimented. They get all excited at the additional 7-8% of the population that will now have health insurance, while ignoring that roughly 20% of the population ALREADY had health insurance, and couldn't afford to use it. That's only going to get WORSE as time goes forward. We decided to force people to buy health insurance (well, except for the REALLY poor but working, they are exempt. 'Course, they are also "exempt" from actually getting health CARE too.) but we did very little to ensure they could afford the under lying care. Certain diagnostic procedures are covered at 100%. Of course if they actually FIND anything, then the real costs start.

The primary result of HCR was to slow the rate of growth of health insurance to the government, mostly medicare and medicaid. For the vast majority of the rest of us, it changed little to nothing and to some extent, for some of us, just raised the cost. Yes, there was alot of INSURANCE reform in this, but much of that won't affect the cost of health CARE and won't actually affect even a plurality of us going forward. That was actually intentional too. Obama repeatedly stated that the intent of his strategy was to NOT change anything for the vast majority of people. This, in a country in which we all pay 3 - 5 times as much for our health care as the rest of the world.

And yet there are those that want to dismiss the difference between health care reform and health insurance reform as mere "semantics".

[SammyWinstonJack]

4. +1. nt.

[eridani]

6. MA shows us what will be happening nationwide

Before MA reform, 59% of bankruptcies were due to medical bills. AFter reform, that dropped to 50%. I am SO NOT impressed.

[libtodeath]

3. Medicare for all NOW! n/t

[Land Shark]

5. K&R n/t

[jessiesmith]

7. Spam deleted by hlthe2b (MIR Team)