So, how many people have medical debt? Actually, it’s around 100 million people around the country that have medical debt. And that’s racked up to be about $200 million — $195 billion in medical debt people in America are incurring. So, essentially, that’s 20% our nation’s population.
The other thing that’s really extraordinary about this is that there are profound racial and ethnic disparities in terms of who owns medical debt. Twenty-eight percent of African American folks have medical debt. Twenty-two percent of Latino, Latina, Latinx folks have medical debt, 17% of white folks, 10% of Asians. So, basically, it’s a phenomena that really hurts low-income folks and people of color. And that’s what all the evidence shows when there’s any kind of national research, peer-reviewed journal research and so forth. And, in fact, we know from the credit reporting agencies that 58% of debt that’s on people’s credit reports is medical debt. So, it’s a profound problem. It’s a ubiquitous problem throughout the country.
I think what’s most distressing about this is how this medical debt is getting incurred. What we have studied in New York is we did a comprehensive universal analysis looking at every single hospital in New York state, all of which are nonprofit charities, allegedly.
— source democracynow.org | Jan 18, 2023