A latest survey shows 25 percent of the U.S. families struggle to pay medical bills.
An absence of any kind of health insurance was the cause of this struggle, the survey conducted by National Center for Health Statistics at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, showed.
"Unpaid medical bills is the number one reason why families declare personal bankruptcy," said Karen Pollitz, a fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation and lead author of a separate study on medical debt, to Bloomberg. "It causes people to lose equity in their homes, to endanger their retirement and their kid's college education. It will destroy a family financially."
The researchers at Kaiser Family Foundation analysed the 2012 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) data. They found that the problem of medical debt was rampant in the country. While 25 percent families said they found it difficult to pay medical bills in 2012, 10 percent said couldn't pay the bills at all.
The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will be in effect fully this year, and health-care coverage will be provided to most of the nation's 48 million uninsured by the Obama administration.
But, the health coverage seems to be of little help to avoid any medical debts. The survey further found that in families where every member was insured, 21 percent of them were having difficult in paying medical bills.
The survey also found that roughly 70 percent of people reporting problems with medical debt were already insured. The main reason for the debt was cost-sharing as typical out-of-pocket costs were higher for health bills than the amount of cash most households had available, reported Bloomberg.
"There will continue to be millions of people in health plans with deductibles in excess of what they have on hand," Pollitz added.
