Americans' medical debt tops $140B, study finds
Katie Adams
Collection agencies held $140 billion in unpaid medical debt in 2020, according to a study published July 20 in JAMA.
Researchers examined a nationally representative panel of consumer credit reports between January 2009 and June 2020. Below are four other notable findings from their report.
An estimated 17.8 percent of Americans owed medical debt in June 2020. The average amount owed was $429.
Over the time period studied, the amount of medical debt became progressively more concentrated in states that don't participate in the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion program.
Between 2013 and 2020, states that expanded Medicaid in 2014 experienced a decline in the average flow of medical debt that was 34 percentage points greater than the average medical debt flow in states that didn't expand Medicaid.
In the states that expanded Medicaid, the gap in the average medical debt flow between the lowest and highest ZIP code income levels decreased by $145, while the gap increased by $218 in states that did not expand Medicaid.