1 in 4 adults had insurance but still couldn’t afford medical care

[Yo_Mama]

40. For lower/middle income it is about 1 in 3 - 32%

Hardest hit were lower to middle-income adults. That's someone who earned from $16,200 to $29,199 last year, or a family of three earning from $27,400 to $49,499. Almost one out of three of these adults said they went without needed medical care because the out-of-pocket cost was too high.

And ACA really hasn't helped many of these people:

The estimated average deductible of silver plans in 2014 was between $2,267 and $3,030, the report said.

I don't know quite what I think, but we haven't solved our problems - instead they seem to be getting worse.

At the clinic a lot of people refuse to go for recommended tests because they don't have the money. It used to be that you asked if they had insurance. Now you ask about what it's going to cost them, and document refusal of care in the records because "insurance gap". It's all just a game of russian roulette played with an insurance card. We now have more refusals of care for those insured than for those not insured. We have plenty of people refusing to go to the ER with insurance now.

We have created a system in which people have to pay in, but some are essentially debarred from getting treatment. It's a winner-takes-all type of system, and in the future we will be paying higher medical costs because of it.

And when people know they can't afford to use it, they refuse even the screening tests, because their theory is that there is no point to them.