The numbers that inform the story of medical debt within the U.S. are staggering: Round 100 million Individuals have well being care debt, and collectively they owe a minimum of $140 billion. And analysis suggests this debt can have putting penalties on folks’s monetary, bodily, and psychological well being.
On this episode of the “Tradeoffs” podcast, Dan Gorenstein talks concerning the ache and attainable options to medical debt with KHN senior correspondent Noam N. Levey and UCLA researcher Wes Yin.
“A couple of third of people that have medical debt owe lower than $1,000,” Levey stated. “However 1 / 4 of individuals owe, I feel, greater than $5,000. Greater than half say they’ve needed to make a troublesome sacrifice, like utilizing up all their financial savings, transferring in with family and friends, or dropping their houses. So I don’t assume it’s hyperbole to say that there’s a surprising quantity of distress on the market.”