100 Million People in America Are Saddled With Health Care Debt

A quarter of adults with health care debt owe more than $5,000. And about one in five with any amount of debt said they don’t expect to ever pay it off. More than 100 million people in America ― including 41 percent of adults ― are beset by a health care system that is systematically pushing patients into debt on a mass scale, an investigation by KHN and NPR shows. The investigation reveals a problem that is far more pervasive than previously reported. That is because much of the debt that patients accrue is hidden as credit card balances, loans from family, or payment plans to hospitals and other medical providers. To calculate the true extent and burden of this debt, the KHN-NPR investigation draws on a nationwide poll conducted by KFF for this project. Learn more from Governing here.