PULSE CHECK: New Report Finds 1 in 5 Insured Adults Still Carry Medical Debt, Other Findings on Health Care Affordability

Additional findings reveal widespread concern from both insured and uninsured people alike about excessive hospital prices and the financial risks of routine treatment.

Washington, DC — Today, United States of Care (USofCare) released The Affordability Crisis that Coverage Didn’t Solve, the second installment in its Pulse Check series of deep dives into key themes from USofCare’s listening work. Among the report’s findings, 21% of insured adults carry medical debt, nearly identical to the 23% of uninsured adults, underscoring that health coverage no longer reliably protects people from financial harm. Faced with unaffordable costs, people are falling into medical debt, cutting household expenses, and withdrawing from the system.

Key Insights on the Affordability Crisis Include:

• Coverage no longer shields people from debt. Medical debt now hits insured and uninsured adults at nearly identical rates. Twenty-one percent of insured adults carry medical debt, compared to 23% of the uninsured.
• Costs are unaffordable across the board. Seventy-one percent of people agree that health care costs are unaffordable, and significant shares struggle with specific costs regardless of coverage type: 25% struggle with prescription drug costs, 24% with premiums, 22% with hospital prices, and 17% with deductibles.
• Hospital prices feel arbitrary and hidden for both the insured and the uninsured. Ninety-four percent of people say hospital prices are high overall, and 53% believe hospitals charge more than they need to (a view that holds across political affiliation and geography). Seven in ten reported being charged high prices at hospitals for everyday items like bandages and Tylenol.
• Even with coverage, routine care carries financial risk. One in four adults who haven’t received primary care in the past two years cite cost as the reason, and many describe unexpected bills following visits they assumed were covered.
• The public wants action on costs, not just more coverage expansion. Thirty-nine percent of people say lowering health care costs is the single most important issue for Congress to address and 69% say Congress should act to ensure affordable care, even if it means regulating health care companies, a view shared across party lines.

“For years, the assumption behind health care policy has been that getting more people covered would solve the affordability problem,” said Natalie Davis, CEO of United States of Care. “Our research shows that assumption no longer holds. People are playing by the rules — getting insured, paying premiums, showing up for care — and still ending up in debt. If we want a system people can trust, we have to reckon with whether coverage actually protects people, not just whether they have it.”

“People told us, in their own words, what unaffordable care means for them: not going to the doctor altogether,” said Venice Haynes, Senior Director of Research and Community Engagement at USofCare. “That decision, made by millions of people, is the clearest signal we have that the system is failing at its most basic job of caring for people. This report lays out exactly where the cost burden falls and what people are asking policymakers to do about it.”

USofCare has listened to more than 30,000 people for over 5,000 hours across all 50 states to understand how they experience the health care system in their daily lives. These insights are analyzed into a series of Pulse Check reports that highlight key themes shaping the future of health care. As the second in this series, The Affordability Crisis that Coverage Didn’t Solve examines what people actually mean when they call health care unaffordable, documents where the cost burden falls, and outlines what they want policymakers to do in response.

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