By The Associated Press
The Washington Post, March 6, 2012

ATLANTA — A survey shows 1 in 5 Americans say their families are having trouble paying their medical bills. Worse, half of those who are struggling say they are unable to pay a single dime toward those debts.

The survey of 52,000 people was conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from January through June of last year. It’s the first time the government agency has looked at the issue in such a comprehensive way.

Peter Cunningham, who studies the issue for an independent health policy research group, says it may be the largest such study ever done on the matter.

Lower-income people struggled the most. They were three times more likely to have difficulty paying their medical bills over the past year. It’s the first time the CDC has asked the medical debt question in its long-standing, in-person health survey, so there is no previous data to compare it with.

But another organization — the nonpartisan Center for Studying Health System Change, where Cunningham works — believes the number of people struggling with medical debt actually has been stable in the last five years.

The statistic of 1 in 5 who struggle with medical bills was reported by Cunningham and his colleagues in a smaller study in 2007 at the start of the recession. That figure remained the same in their 2010 survey, and that’s surprising since the ranks of the unemployed and uninsured grew by millions.

“As the number of uninsured increased, and there was higher unemployment, you’d expect that more people would report having problems paying medical bills,” Cunningham said.

However, he and other experts believe there’s something else at play here: Many Americans are likely just cutting back on doctor visits, prescription purchases and other health care spending.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/1-in-5-us-families-say-they-struggle-to-pay-medical-bills-half-say-they-cant-pay-a-cent/2012/03/06/gIQAdu9IvR_story.html

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Online CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/

Financial Burden of Medical Care: Early Release of Estimates From the National Health Interview Survey, January–June 2011

By Robin A. Cohen, Ph.D.; Renee M. Gindi, Ph.D.; and Whitney K. Kirzinger, M.P.H., Division of Health Interview Statistics, National Center for Health Statistics

The highlights of the study are as follows:

* In the first 6 months of 2011, 1 in 3 persons was in a family experiencing financial burden of medical care. One in 5 persons was in a family having problems paying medical bills, 1 in 4 persons was in a family paying medical bills over time, and 1 in 10 persons was in a family that had medical bills they were unable to pay at all.

• Chances of being in families having problems paying medical bills, paying medical bills over time, and having medical bills that could not be paid at all, decreased with age. Almost 24 percent of children aged 0–17 years were in families having problems paying medical bills compared with 21 percent of adults aged 18–64, 10 percent of adults aged 65–74, and 7 percent of adults aged 75 and over.

• Among persons under age 65, those who were poor and those who were near poor were more likely to be in families having problems paying medical bills and to have medical bills they were unable to pay at all than those who were not poor.

• More than 1 in 5 poor and more than one in five near poor persons under age 65 were in families that had medical bills they were unable to pay at all.

• Among adults aged 65 and over, those who were poor and those who were near poor were more than three times as likely as those who were not poor to be in families that had problems paying medical bills in the past 12 months.

For the full report:

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhis/earlyrelease/financial_burden_of_medical_care_032012.pdf