Since her last run for governor of Georgia four years ago, Stacy Abrams admirably addressed a major American problem—medical debt.
Stacy Abrams and her organization, The Fair Fight Political Action Committee, donated $1.34 million to the nonprofit organization RIP Medical Debt to eliminate debt worth $212 million owed by 108,000 people in Georgia, Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
Paying off this debt was a part of the group’s advocacy seeking expansion of Medicaid coverage in the 12 states that have refused to expand the health insurance to all poorer adults. Why is this necessary? What is the problem?
The bottom line is that the United States does not have a health care system. Instead, it has a hodge-podge of medical care enterprises that make money off the illness of citizens. And citizens pay out of pocket, unlike in education, where citizens pay taxes and get “free” public education.
Consequently, Americans owe at least $140 million in outstanding medical debt. Over 50 percent of Americans have medical debt.
By 2020, individuals had more medical debt in collections than they had debt in collections from all other sources combined, including credit cards, phone bills, and utilities. While the high cost of medical care has historically been a factor in bankruptcy filings, data show that implementing the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) has not improved things.
Medical debt is a primary cause of bankruptcy. Two-thirds of people who file bankruptcy cite medical issues as a key contributor to their financial problems. Nearly half of people with medical debt say it has prevented them from buying a house or saving for retirement.
One survey showed that 59 percent of people with no health insurance had medical debt, and a slightly higher percentage of persons with insurance had medical debt. Deductibles are one reason people with medical insurance seem more likely to have debt than those without coverage.
Many people choose high deductible plans because they tend to come with lower monthly premiums. However, this causes a problem because policyholders with high deductible/low premium plans are less likely to seek primary or preventive care due to high upfront costs, according to the American Academy of Family Physicians.
Since many medical problems are unexpected and worsened by a lack of preventive care, policyholders can quickly find themselves in debt, especially when paying the total yearly deductible amount.
Another significant reason that medical debt is such a problem is the failure of many states to expand Medicaid as allowed under the Affordable Care Act. Overall, annual rates of new medical debt fell approximately 50 percent between 2013 and 2000 in states that expanded Medicaid, but it decreased only about 10 percent in states that did not.
Twelve states have not expanded Medicaid, which can be attributed chiefly to the cruelty of the Republicans leading those states, as the federal government pays most of the costs of the expansion.
Medical debt is a severe problem in the United States. According to a poll by the Pew Research Center, American citizens are much more worried about health care issues as a top public matter and concern, especially medical expenses, rather than the economy and terrorism.
The United States is grossly out of step with the rest of the developed world on medical issues. The threat of unmanageable medical debts is mainly unknown to persons in Western Europe, Japan, and Australia.
Will we ever catch up with the rest of the richer nations?
