Millions More Americans Can Now Afford Their Medical Bills
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Andre Blais/iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK ) — More Americans under the age of 65 — 2.9 million more to be exact — are no longer facing the same difficulties paying their medical bills as they were a year ago, according to a new CDC report released Thursday.
All told, nearly 8.8 million have achieved this level of financial security with regard to their medical bills since 2011.
There are still 47.7 million Americans that have problems with paying their medical bills, according to the CDC report. That’s roughly 17 percent of the American adult population overall.
Children are more likely than adults to be in families having problems paying medical bills, according to researchers.
The researchers also found that Americans with private insurance have less trouble paying medical bills than those with public insurance, and they experience far less trouble than uninsured Americans.
Racial disparities, however, have not improved. Non-Hispanic black Americans still fare worse than Hispanic Americans, and Hispanics still do worse than non-Hispanic whites and non-Hispanic Asians in the new report.
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